Sustainability In The Cannabis Industry

Learn more about sustainability in the cannabis industry with Emily Backus, Sustainability Advisor at Denver Dept of Public Health. Emily Backus, Sustainability Advisor at the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment focusing on Environmental Quality and leads the Denver Cannabis Sustainability Workgroup.

Sustainability is an important issue across all industries. Many agricultural (like the wine industry, avocado trees, and almond trees) and industrial businesses such as chemical plants and consumer goods manufacturing, have to consider issues around water, soil, toxic chemicals, energy use and everything in between. We talk about how and why she got involved in the cannabis industry considering her position with the City and County.

Cannabis Implementation In Ohio

Cannabis implementation in Ohio with Jay Jones, Director of Business Relations of Bene Leaves Limited, based in Columbus, Ohio. We talk about some of the challenges and frustrations Jay is seeing there and why he thinks it’s been such a struggle to implement progressive cannabis laws in that state. Jay has worked in the industry in Colorado and Michigan, and now also Ohio. That experience lets him speak to what’s going on in each of those states, as well his experiences on how they compare and contrast.

NCIA published one of their early white papers on the opioid crisis and how it may be an EXIT drug rather than a gateway drug for those looking to reduce or eliminate their opioid use to prevent addiction and death. Jay shares his thoughts on that topic as well as so much on today’s episode.

Transcription:

Get informed, get inspired, and get connected.

Hello, thanks for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, I am your host Bethany Moore, I’m the Communications Manager at the National cannabis industry association today. My guest is Jay Jones, he is the Director of Business Relations of Bene Leaves Limited, and they’re based in Columbus, Ohio. How are you doing today, Jay?

I’m doing great, bet many things for having me. How are you?

I am doing well.

It’s still really hot as we were just saying, the weather, super hot here in August, but we’re all looking forward to the fall.

So let’s dive in, let’s get to know you better, I would love to hear more about your background and your experience and what kind of things you were doing professionally before getting involved in the cannabis industry.

Sure, actually I spent most of my adult life in the corporate world through restaurants and finance. I was always trying to be they were always trying to put me in a box or fit me in on lane, which was something I wasn’t very good at and I found myself gravitating towards more of the philanthropy community outreach in volunteerism, everywhere I went, and I set up that through a couple of different companies I worked for, so that’s basically what I did. They were standard corporate jobs. Don’t really get to do, but I was always like, “Hey I’m not really satisfied doing this. Why don’t we start stocking shelves at the food bank or doing some social equity programs and things like that.

Okay, right, so you were already an employee at these companies, and you wanted to start these new programs, corporate philanthropy programs while you were there sort of taking on another side project is that right?

Yeah, I just wasn’t satisfied in the banking industry, it’s not really fun to work in, as far as personal satisfaction. And I just wasn’t interested in it was just always looking to do something different, that kind still in that void that I wasn’t getting.

Yeah, I’m sure it’s probably a cut-throat work culture, and very regimented and not a lot of flexibility in that kind of environment. I imagine.

Sure, absolutely, you can be replaced, the next day you become a number in companies are always looking at the bottom line and unfortunately, people are the class of that, so not really putting people before profits, I suppose.

Absolutely, got it, so yeah. So it sounds like you’ve got a bigger heart than the banking industry can handle, which is a good thing. That’s a nice right.

So what is the reason you got passionate about cannabis industry, and then chose to get involved and how did that shift happen?

So cannabis actually I can credit it with saving my life. I remember 25 years ago when I first got out of high school, I kinda just popped around on the festival circuit, when the Dead shows, things like that. And I remember being specifically true story, being in a … with a guy named magic and go on right right, and he was at what we call now a wake, and he was… It’s just telling me all the medicinal properties of cannabis. And you’re like, “Sure, pass it over here” I’m I’m cured, so most of my adult life up until I was 38, I was a functioning alcoholic and addict, and I still did well at work and I showed up on time, things like that, most of the time and after I got clean, my doctor because of some Oster arthritis in my knees and some other medical conditions, put me back around opioids.

So yeah, my doctor had me on opioids and I actually took a leave from the financial institution I was working at, and when I found myself counting down the minutes to my next Percocet, I knew where this was going.

Yeah, essentially, and I went into my doctor and I just said, “Hey I’m done, I’m done, I just get a… A right and well, do you want me to start ready? A less powerful prescription to kinda step you down, I said, “Now I’m going full turkey.

He said What’s gonna be a miserable five days so good luck with that, The… So I had some cannabis at home obtained legally of course, and started doing… Honestly, when you’re in the throws with drum, you’re thinking about a lot of things I’m like, “Hey Magic. That guy in the tens, this workshop.

So I got through my withdraws with cannabis and then started using it regularly, but I didn’t like smoking it, so I went off the prescriptions cold cure. My doctor said this is gonna be a miserable five days. And as a men withdraw from being on it for almost a year.

I remember that guy magic, it sounds corny but I did, and the thing is I really didn’t like smoking flower, so I talked to my aunt and uncle who were both chefs CIA grad, and accomplished and I… We can extract this stuff with coconut oil and make it into some honey or something just more palatable.

And it worked, and I went off of 11 prescription medications.

Wow.

And I went back into my doctor like six months later. And the first thing I reception is said was You look phenomenal and she said, “What are you doing? And I said, cannabis, and she’s like, Good for you. And had a very honest conversation with my doctor, we… So I never looked back at the bank, I quit, didn’t go back and we started talking as a team. My aunt has rumored arthritis, the medicine she was on… was gonna cause blindness.

My uncle, his sister died of pancreatic cancer and palliative care was such an unbelievably miserable experience for her before she lost her battle. That we just kind of collectively said there has to be a better way and we have to get involved and I, we just had that moment of…

Yeah, we’re doing the right thing and that’s how we started.

Well, wow, what a story. Yeah, that’s great to… So you’re kind of a family-owned business is that true?

We are, it’s a great story. My aunt, my uncle, when I started it, and we teamed up with two brothers who have been a family friend for 30 plus years, and we’ve just built this amazing team here at Ben ales that really believe in us, the two families that started this and really believe in what we’re doing as a company.

Awesome, so before we hop on a commercial break to tell me again a little bit more about Beale. You’re in Columbus, Ohio. Do you have a store front? And what’s your company looking like?

We are processors.

Okay, and we’re in close I like you said, we go to market in about three weeks, we’ve been working on this for three years and we can talk a little bit about that later, but we are approaching this from a little bit of different… We’re approaching this from taste first, and there’s some great products in the market, but nothing that we’ve been 100% satisfied not to knock any competition, because we love the other people in this industry, but we really wanna stand apart with our flavor profiles.

Got it, got it, great, cool, well we are going to jump to that commercial break I mentioned, and then we’re gonna come back and chat more with J. Jones from Bene leaves limited stay

Alright, we’re back on NCIS, cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, talking with Jay Jones from Bene Leaves Limited in Columbus, Ohio, speaking of Ohio, I understand you have experience working in multiple states, you’ve worked in the industry in Colorado and in Michigan, and now in Ohio, of course. Let’s talk a little bit about what’s going on in each of those states and what your experiences were and maybe the similarities or differences between them.

Sure, absolutely, the great thing about working in those three states, is it’s like a slow timeline, into the future. from Ohio to Michigan, to Colorado in Colorado, no one bats and I at the cannabis industry.

I’m sure there are some people that, but they’re on a…

I teased news right, to get over it. And Michigan with Michigan passing Prop 1 last year there right where Colorado, was years ago and now Ohio were lagging a little bit behind. And you just think it’s from lack of education people really still think that cannabis is the Bookman in the gateway drug, which is just so, unfounded I’m sure as you know, in Colorado where teen use has gone down, property values have gone up crime has gone down to… I don’t need to preach fire, but if they could just see that the normalization of the industry and that we’re all wearing suits and ties or some time that’s…

We have … right now we put them here in a lot down in… Yeah, so it’s really been an unbelievable learning experience for me to bring back to the team here, mentally is just from working in those states, and just seeing the amazing people that are really moving this industry forward for states like Ohio, that’s lagging a little behind.

Yeah, yeah, got it. Well, we’re written for Ohio and of course we were thrilled about Michigan passing and every year we just see more and more progress, across the map. So, slow but steady will win the race in some cases, so absolutely I…

Yeah, Ohio is definitely going a little slow, as far as moving toward full adult use legalization there. Let’s talk more about some of the challenges and frustrations you’re seeing there and why you think it’s been such a struggle to get laws moving and get change the hearts and minds and educate people in that state. What is unique about Ohio that it’s resisting …, most people know ravaged by the opioid epidemic just decimated if you go down into the Apaches down south, there’s zombies walking down the street. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that.

So a lot of the arguments that we’ve heard have been… We don’t need another drug here. It’s a gateway drug, now, that we hired old tropes that you’ve heard time time again, okay. Well, there’s great people that are using cannabis as an ex-drug in Michigan and La and aren’t looking at this as an economic advantage, and they aren’t looking at those statistics that we’re seeing in legalized states, they’re not seeing it as plant medicine, they’re seeing it as a drug.

Alright, got it, yeah. Well, I did publish a white paper, one of our early white papers a few years ago on the opioid crisis and how it actually does serve as an exit drug, rather than a gateway drug for a lot of people that are looking to reduce or eliminate their opioid use to prevent addiction, or death in a lot of cases, and for people that wanna check that white paper out the line, the WWW the cannabis industry, dot org, cannabis and opioids. Check that one out.

You have a personal story. So for me to ask you what your thoughts are, I can almost predict what you’re going to say, but yeah let’s talk about using cannabis as an exit drug, or as a healing plant instead of opioids.

Well, you know, it’s funny ’cause I’m also a member of alcoholics anonymous and I go to meetings regularly, and for… Gosh, the first year and a half that we were in this industry, I was I hit what I was doing, everyone knew I still wasn’t I wasn’t at the bank anymore but knowing knew exactly what I was doing.

But these same people we’re perfectly fine taking the benzodiazepine or something like that, or a description because we trust our doctors and not that we shouldn’t but for me it works for me. And I didn’t have the cravings and things like that that I had for opioids or Methadone and really opened my eyes was after I had done all that on my own, going up to first to Michigan and walking or dispensary called Om of medicine which is owned by a fellow NCIA member Mark Passerini and he’s on our board of directors, is… And just seeing what they were doing with the University of Michigan in their pain study and working with Susie and it was, it was validating and yeah, I… When I finally went back to my AA meeting at the facility where I went to rehab the staff are for five years now, and I, they rushed me what I’ve been up to and I finally just came clean and said, “Listen we started medical cannabis company and I got hugs, I got thank yous. I keep, I get a mini-less, I see… And I mean, it’s awesome. I was so far. Yeah, and they get it. So, it’s stories like that and people like that that need to be the voice in a state like Ohio or Indiana, or Kentucky to combat that fear.

Yeah, yeah, I got it.

Cool, wow. Well, there’s still a lot of work to do, but I think the message is getting out there to people that cannabis is safer than opioids and even alcohol.

Absolutely, yeah. So I switch gears here a little bit. You went to our lobby days with us this year in May, it was our ninth annual, lobby days I believe we had over 300-350 NCIA members join us in the halls of Congress this year. And you also got to talk about your personal experience with cannabis and opioids and the story you just shared with me and our listeners, you got to share with members of Congress and their staff, how did that go?

So, lobby days was, I would say, one of the most fulfilling experiences we’ve had so far in the industry, we had heard about it first at the Midwest cannabis caucus two years ago, Michelle rudder with NCIA had quartered me. I shared my story, and she’s like… You have to go to lab days, you have to go and I’m like, Alright, alright, she’s like you, share your story. And for the past years obviously not having income we just couldn’t justify it, but this year we said, we gotta do it. And myself had Allen back our CEO, and Bill Williams or Director of Sales all went down, we did the Vito and… Gosh, was it rewarding? It was just such a need experience to be there with other members in the industry and lawmakers not in-network and capacity. No one was trying to sell you anything. We were just all together as one group.

The involvement that you guys got with lawmakers like Katie, Porter and of course Ed Perlmutter and I think Charlie Chris came to one of our events, didn’t think “Oh I think, gosh, we had 15 members of Congress come through our events after all was said and done. It was fantastic, showing… Yeah, it was just great. And my group, we got two people to change their votes. Joy spay and Bob Gibbs in Ohio.

Excellent, excellent work. Oh, a more high fives cool, yes. Well, I hope to see you again next year for a 10 annual cannabis industry lobby days and any other “ncia members listening please join us next year in DC. And you heard from J. himself? It was one of the most fulfilling experiences in the industry.

We’re gonna hop and take a commercial break, but we will be right back to talk more with J. Jones of Bene leaves limited stay

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio. I’m your host, Bethany and we’re speaking with Jay Jones of Bene Leaves Limited based in Columbus, Ohio and we’re just wrapping up our talk here, today, thank you again for sharing your story about your personal experience with opioids and alcohol and using this wonderful cannabis plant to become more healthy. So thanks again for sharing that.

Coming to lobby days, that’s amazing. It is a big deal to go to DC and it’s long days walking around the hill but it is, it’s a fantastic experience and I truly enjoy it. It’s one of the best events that NCIA does throughout the year. And like you said, it’s not a networking event, really it is, but I mean a… But yeah, you’re there to do something, you’re there to effect change, you’re there to change a couple votes which could mean the passing of something. So thank you so much.

What made your company decide to join NCIAa? And how old are you enjoying your membership? So initially when we formed the company we started, we just kinda Googled trade organizations and we found NCIA and just went through pore through your website and just saw the benefit of it and we joined because we were little guys, and we’re still little guys, and we didn’t have a voice.

And I can’t tell you through the events how great a resource, NCIA is. Everyone picks up the phone. If you have a question from John in to you or Michelle, I’m friends with Aaron on Facebook. Now, how cool is that?

That’s awesome, so I can… I just give one a bit of advice for lobby days yeah, so there’s a little tram subway under the capital and do not attempt to take that unless you’re with a member of Congress on the day.

Oh, they don’t like that, do they?

On Tuesday, we had a member of Congress with our team, and I forget his name, he’s on the NCIA larger team and we just hop on this and to it. So the next day I was with my group, and I was like, “I know this shortcut” and I go walking through just all confident. And these guys that are armed very well came. Just what are you doing? You can’t go in here.

And I was like, What I took it yesterday and the Congress only, and I was like, Oh, sorry. So we ended up walking 12 miles out of our way because of it.

No, it’s okay. I think I remember hearing about that story. I think Khurshid who’s on our board of directors also had an opportunity to take the Congressional train. It makes you feel a little special. I personally have never gotten to take the train, but yeah, that’s cool. I don’t know, just another side note, there’s these little boxes around some of the buildings that there’s a plaque on them that says their escape patches and these things are like no bigger than a small book shelf and you’re like, what their escape hatches or something, right?

They’re so weird… Anyway, DC is such a weird old place with a lot of weird history are… So, we only have about a minute a year before we have to wrap up, but yeah, thanks again for coming to lobby days and it was great to see you at the cannabis business Summit last month in San Jose as well, and thanks for hopping on camera with me as well to give a testimonial and then I hope people are ready to attend our industry socials in our Heartland tour this month in August although the month is almost out, but there’s other events, there’s the California cannabis business conference October 8, and ninth in California. And if you get your tickets before August 31st, its early bird prices right now, it’s half basically, from the price of the door.

So definitely check that out. At California cannabis business conference come, “Oh yes. And then our cannabis caucus event series as well continues throughout the end of the year. So there’s lots of opportunities, whether it’s an evening networking reception or a two, three-day full on conference to get involved in NCIA’s events and meet other NCIA members and industry professionals.

So looking forward to all these events throughout the rest of the year as we’re wrapping up our summer vacations here in August. So where can people find out more about Bene Leaves Limited?

Sure, you can go to Bene Leaves dot com, that’s B-E-N-E-L-E-A-V-E-S, dot com. We will pending approval will be up on the usual social media sites for the industry, and you can always find us at the mid-west cannabis caucus or lobby day next year, ….

Nice, nice, great. Okay, Well Jay, thank you again for being on the show and for sharing your story. It’s very inspiring and we’re glad to have you in the industry. Thanks for your membership and thanks to everybody who tuned in to this episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice until next time.

A Job Recruiting Platform Specifically For The Cannabis Industry

In this episode, learn more about a job recruiting platform specifically for the cannabis industry with Justinian Mason, Business Development Manager at Vangst Talent Network. VTN is a job recruiting platform specifically for the cannabis industry. Vangst is one of a handful of staffing and recruiting firms that focus on the cannabis industry. Another important topic in the cannabis industry is opening up business opportunities for those who have been most impacted by the war on drugs, so equity and diversity issues are on our minds as we’re building this new industry together.

We’ve seen programs in certain cities and states like Massachusetts and Oakland, CA that set aside a certain number of direct to plant licenses for people of color, but that is more at the ownership level. Vangst believes that having an exceptional internal team allows them to serve their clients best. That’s why VTN prides itself on hiring the most talented internal staff for every aspect of their business. As well as their constant growth is a testament to their devotion to being ahead of the game in the rapidly growing cannabis space. We talk about the advice Justinian has for someone who wants to get a job in the cannabis industry but has no real experience yet and much more.

Transcription:

Get informed get inspired and get connected.

Hello, thank you for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis Radio, I’m your host Bethany Moore, the communications Project Manager at the National Cannabis Industry Association. Today I’m happy to introduce my guest Justinian Mason he’s the business development manager, at Vangst Talent Network which is a job recruiting platform specifically for the cannabis industry. Nice to have you on the show today, Justinian …

Thank you happy to be on here.

Yes, yes, absolutely. I got to meet you in person at our Cannabis Business Summit and expo this summer in San Jose, so it’s a pleasure to be talking to you some more today on the podcast, let’s start by getting to know a little bit more about you, your background, what kind of work or what kind of things you were doing before you got involved in the cannabis industry, and the cannabis movement?

Yeah, so I guess you can say I am from a non-traditional cannabis state I’m really from Cincinnati, Ohio, born and raised. I got a chance to actually go to upstate New York and I receive my degree and play football in college, but I received my degree I actually moved back home and got into the staffing and recruiting industry, I’ve been doing staffing and recruiting for about six years now. In all industries, pretty much from manufacturing aerospace logistics, all the way to healthcare attack and of course now cannabis so impacting of recruiting and staffing world and industry, but I’ve primarily been on a sales or account management side and really dealing more with clients and companies how in them really understand what’s going on and what’s needed versus dealing heavily with the candidates. But if you work with staff in recruiting by all means you are a recruiter. No matter what your role is, so obviously having a lot of great conversations with great big people throughout the board.

Yeah, it’s people across all industries. We are still human beings no matter what industry we work in, I suppose, yeah, when I… A percent and everyone needs to hire no matter what the industry is, yes, and I think, as a lot of people know our industry is creating jobs at lightning speed, so it’s nice to be a job creating industry this despite being federally illegal.

Yeah, yeah, and it’s exciting to see because all of the creation happening now, you can only imagine what’s going to happen once it is fully regulated in legal is the sky’s the limit.

Absolutely great, so is there a reason that you decided to go work for Vangst and serve the cannabis industry? Is there an inspirational reason why you decided… Cannabis would be a good shift from other industries to work in?

So I got introduced to cannabis through athletics have a successful career in college but unfortunately, and due to injury and even before that happened, actually had a couple of rough concussions that really made her for Focus made it hard for me to sleep, I was having some headaches. And migraines and a teammate. I recommend the campus. That was a game changer so I always saw it from good for you perspective for a medical perspective. Of course, I have my fun with it as well, but that’s how I got introduced and as I transitioned back home from college as I got in the staffing, recruiting, some conversations had already started happening. I visited California and seeing what was going on out here, but it was actually conversations with my then boss and president of the company, about cannabis Cincinnati, back in 2015 was actually voting to possibly decriminalize it, which we recently did this year, but funny that we were voting back in 2015. so conversations like that led to me thinking when this industry starts to grow and build their the needs some sort of staffing and recruiting.

So I eventually moved out to California to try and get in the industry. It took a while and I definitely got the trapped by so much that’s going on within the industry.

I would work retail thought I would sell for a brand for a while, but what ultimately led me to tanks was the fact that it was really what I had done in the past staffing, recruiting, sales just in the cannabis industry, and then thinking back to my background, being from a non-traditional cannabis state and then on deeper level, first-generation with Caribbean parents.

It was a much comfortable conversation saying, “Hey I work for a staffing recruiting company that happens to impact cannabis versus saying, “Hey I work for a natural cannabis brand.” So those are some of the main reasons.

Got it. And it must feel really nice to be able to combine your professional skill set with something you’re actually super passionate about. Maybe you are passionate about healthcare and manufacturing, but you actually have a personal story about how cannabis helped you, which a you… Makes you an activist and advocate with a personal story. And in fact, anybody even if they don’t have a personal story, once you start working in the industry you get your activist card in the mail right away. It’s part of one of the obligations and responsibilities I think, of being in the industry. So, it must feel really, really good to be able to combine all those skills with your passion.

It really does. I had mentor coach used to say, “If you love what you do, you’ll never work you never work, a day in your life. And how I feel like I’ve been in that mode where I, I, I do, I work hard, but I’m not actually working since I stepped into the industry so it’s really cool. And then staffing and recruiting literally what we do is get people jobs or helping grow the economy grow businesses grow people’s lives personally, professionally, financially, so that’s a crazy satisfying experience in itself.

Absolutely, and it’s definitely a lot of hard work. Everyone I know in the industry is hustling and putting in long hours, but when you go home for the day, it feels really good and you feel like you got a lot done rather than feeling dreamed. I think, at least that’s how I feel.

Cool, so you’re working with Vangst and you’re getting to combine your skills with your passion and your role. There is the business development manager. So yeah, let’s talk more about that day-to-day grind, about your role there and just what’s going on with the company in general and how you’re serving the industry. You guys are getting pretty big now.

Yeah, yeah, it’s crazy. I think when I joined less than two years ago, I was around employee 25-ish, and now we’re getting close to 75 as were primarily based out of Denver. I sit in LA and we’ve got a smaller team, on the West Coast, so as Westin development manager, I mentioned earlier I’m focused mainly on clients on the businesses and helping them and really our team internally… Understand how, why, where they’re growing, what’s the timeline like I mentioned, all companies in this industry are growing all companies in the industry or start-ups in some way, shape or form, so everyone’s growing in a different pace. So, I kinda see myself as a consultant, despite my job title is less of a… It’s more of a… Yes, Miramar. I understand you need to grow. Let’s work and talk about the best way to do that.

So it’s a very consultative role and I love it because I… At Vangst, we get to touch all aspects of the industry, real cultivation distribution, we even work with ancillary businesses as well.

So kind of going back to my manufacturing days, when I was walking around plants and checking out cool machines, I get to do that as well. In Canada, I get to go on rotors, and checkout facilities, not just to really understand more of what the business is doing, but also to learn a little bit more about the environment, the culture, so then we can better recruit and better find people to fit that when it comes down to recruiting job descriptions, and a lot of roles and jobs these days were getting pretty black and white where you can either do something or can and a lot of companies are looking for the same things. So understanding the culture, the feel of a business, whether they have an on-site break room or not, that will matter to some people to be able to uncover a lot of those things up. We can better support candidates companies and the whole industry is a big part of what I do. So that’s a lot of going the businesses in person, a lot of talking to people over the phone and discovering what’s going on a lot of events, so many events in cannabis that’s the best way to really get to know people and get to really see things first hand in an efficient way.

So all over the map got it. Yeah, that’s fantastic. So yeah, I guess these companies are finding themselves growing quickly and do most companies know what they need or is that part of that consulting element you are mentioning where you’re helping suss out? Okay, exactly what do you need and when…

So yeah, it’s a combination. A lot of people will come to us, we’ll say, “Hey I have X, Y, Z position, that need to hire, I need to hire sales reps and some brand ambassadors. Great, we can help you with that. But a lot of what I do is a lot of what we do is we’d love to help you with a… We’re looking to be long-term partners we wanna grow with companies to help them get to 1000 employees and we wanna be that long from partner, so it’s great. That will definitely help you with those sales and brand ambassadors, but how can we really help you grow on your manufacturing front, how can we maybe help you get a manager in place who can help you manage that staff, maybe get a couple of internal HR partners who can really partner with us internally to help drive things forward. So a lot of people will come to us with that immediate need. That thing is right there in front of us but we do try and work proactively and a lot of it is where it’s a candidate-driven market no matter what industry you work in, candidates have what I’ll call the power-and employments. Pretty low great, people are out there, a lot of smart intelligent degrees individuals. So a lot of what we’re doing is say, “Hey I understand you need to hire these people, but there’s a lot of great people out there that are ready to get an industry now. Is there a space for them in helping people see that larger picture is a big thing, but to that point, what companies that come to us and say, “Hey here’s a hiring plan for the next year, how do we make this happen?

Nice, some people know what they want.

Yeah, gotcha.

Before we jumped to commercial, I’m sure there’s a lot of executives out there that will relate to what I’m about to say. They’ve been wearing 15 hats for the last couple of years and their team is probably begging them to just hire an assistant finally right?

That, like I said, is a start-up industry. I wear three different hats on in a given day myself, so I can only imagine what some of these owners and operators are going through and that’s exactly what we’re here for. We’re a partner we’re a resource, we are here to really be there when you need us. But also were that everyday partner as well. And we’re flexible. You mentioned executives. I feel like we just naturally a lot of people think those salaried roles, those full-time roles, and that’s a big part of our business that’s our direct Higher function, but that platform aspect of us what we call banks gig is we’re actually helping a lot of companies grow with their hourly staff with those production needs. With those temporary needs, as they’re building and expanding, and sometimes decreasing their staff as a lot of startups will do camp. So, it’s helping companies grow in a lot of ways, but also it’s helping a lot of candidates step into the industry because you can start a short-term assignment get some great experience and then be on your way.

Awesome, awesome, cool. We’re gonna take that quick commercial break and be right back, stay tuned.

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, talking with Justinian Mason from Vangst Talent Network. So Vangst is one of a handful of staffing and recruiting firms that focus on the cannabis industry and there’s a lot of people out there who are excited that they can actually go get a job in the cannabis industry and get a real paycheck and perhaps even benefits in some cases. It’s like mind-blowing from where we were 10 years ago. Yeah, but for all those people, and I know plenty of my old friends and schoolmates, that are curious and hit me up on Facebook. So what’s that basic advice you would give to someone who really wants to get a job in the cannabis industry at this point and hasn’t yet done so, maybe they’re making a career change.

Yeah, and I had a clear answer, and I thought of something before my answer as you’re going through that question, but the first thing I’ll say, is find out what you are passionate about, find out what your personal specialized knowledge is. I mentioned my story I moved out here again in the industry was looking at retail as a cat brands, and it wasn’t until I tripped and fell and applied for a role through banks that I went back and saw a weight. There’s a staffing company for Canada, and it was… What I love to do is what I’m passionate about, is when I’m skilled at… And it was a great transition. So I think the first step is before you step into the industry really figure out if cannabis didn’t exist, what would my five-year plan be what would I want to do with my career then bring cannabis back into it. And now number two, do your research, do your homework. Like I mentioned, I didn’t know there was a staffing recruiting company specifically for cannabis, but had I did, I probably would have applied to Vangst first.

That was light bulb moment, I’m sure.

And once I stepped into the industry within my first I argued at my first year in cannabis, I learned more nights have in the past five. But you learn so much going through it. So once you really lock in, “Okay this is what I’m about, “This is what I wanna do with card-less and loop cannabis back into it, and then start doing the research. My searches back then, probably would have been Canada staffing companies rather than the just candidates sales jobs.

So find your passion, find your specialized knowledge start doing the research. I love Google, so google thinks Google camps branding agencies cannabis production jobs if you’re an entire cannabis engineering and you’d be surprised what pops up, but definitely doing your research, and going in knowledgeable it’s hard to really understand unless you’re actually in it but when you can do a little bit more, it definitely helps that makes sense. Yeah, that’s good advice. As with any industry, you’d like to work in, do the research, meet people ask questions, right, so I… So as you’re going along here and comparing the cannabis industry and the kinds of professional needs that these companies have, I’m curious if there is a bucket of skills or core competencies that would be necessary that are maybe even unique to the cannabis industry, that candidates should have. Is there anything like that, or is it just all over the place?

The unique cannabis core competencies, they really only come into play when the product is involved. If you’re a direct and… Yeah, and you’re in the cut if you’re a cultivator, is one of those things where you either have cultivation experience or you do not have cultivation experience. I do, and now when no one’s coming from left field and hobby and being a cultivator, right?

In those cases, there are those core competencies, but I’d send an overall going back to what we said earlier, it’s a start-up industry, it’s a brand new industry, it’s a federally-illegal industry still, so I think the main core commences are based on that. We talked about one, which is that passion in the advocacy. You can be in this industry if you are not a support supporter of candidates that it just doesn’t make sense but once you get in it you’ll find that whether it’s not for the whole industry, whatever your brand, whatever your product is, whatever company are part of you have to be an advocate, you have to be a rep you have to be a cheerleader for it, it doesn’t matter who you are. So, I’d say that’s one. But going back to that start up that new industry, you have to be flexible, you have to be adaptable, you can’t come in and expect a nine to five and expect to have clear job duties. Obviously you have your responsibilities, but you’re going to have to go above and beyond because that’s what a lot of these companies need. So I get to that next level.

Ability to work in a fast-paced environment is… And the thing is fast-paced. I wouldn’t even… I don’t even think that does it justice. In an industry where every year feels like dog years.

And you might be doing something one year, in a certain way, and the next way next year, it’s a little different totally. So I wanna bring up another really important topic that the cannabis industry is really focused on particularly this last year or two especially, and that’s opening up business opportunities and employment opportunities for those who have been most impacted by the war on drugs. So this is equity and diversity issues that are on our minds as we’re building this new industry together, and as we see other states come online, like Massachusetts and… Oh, the city of Oakland, California, their programs are setting aside a certain number of direct plant licenses for people of color, but that’s more of the ownership level. So when we’re talking about hiring a team, a staff, how does social equity, come into play at that level of staffing and recruiting?

Yeah, and I think, Massachusetts and Oakland or two great examples, Oakland. I can speak a little bit more to with me being in California, but the same way that there are no rules and mandates for ownership there’s also rules like that, for candidates as well, where you are essentially required to hire a certain amount of your staff within that equity land. So things like that are huge when it just comes down to clear diversity, not just physical diversity, but that diversity of thought that’s huge. In any company, but especially cannabis. I know there’s statistics have research outside of the industry where the more diverse companies are often times the more successful, so I think that company should be encouraged and they should feel encouraged and be real proud of hiring on that group of individuals.

Just playing a pure numbers game. There are way more opportunities to impact the industry internally and through your work, then there are as an owner, I think recently LA just went through their rounds of applications for the social equity and I wanna say we have close to 2000 applicants for around 200 licenses so is there… What are those 1800 people who don’t get it, what are they gonna do naturally? The route is how do you get internal? I kinda see it as being an entrepreneur, I consider myself that. How do you get within a company, how do you gain great experience, how you still have that business owner mentality? And then in five, 10 years, if you still have that passion that need that want to start a business, a Mentos. But at that point, you’ll have knowledge, you’ll have experience, you’ll have resources as a network. So I think companies should definitely feel incurs to really drive that forward. And how do you create avenues? They do exist in other industries, avenues as far as getting former offenders into the workforce and manufacturing and things like that, how do we recreate some of those avenues? I’m all about taking something that works in a line is something different.

Totally, yeah that makes perfect sense. Thanks for sharing that.

So we have about a minute before our next commercial break and it’s a little bit of a change of subject, but to think about the future. Also NCIA’s ten year anniversary is coming up next year, in 2020, and we’re already really excited thinking about that. It’s just so impactful. So we’ve been asking people to not only think on all the progress we’ve made in the last 10 years, but also where are we going to be in 10 years or what would you like to see in 10 years in our industry?

I couldn’t even tell you what’s gonna happen in 30 days, let alone 10 years. But what I love to see without a doubt, I really, I know we will be federally legalized. I’d be disappointed if it’s not what I would really love to see. And I think this is directly impacting that is the destination, the stigmatization of the plant of the product. I think that comes with research. I’d really love to see that specifically in sports, in the military in definitely within healthcare being from the Midwest, being from Cincinnati, a place has been heavily impacted by the God crisis. I would love to see some things rectified in that lane, directly from cannabis from HMRC all of that kinda going off of our social equity conversation, I would love equity first to be a mandate no matter what to say is if you were looking to operate on a cannabis business, or even have it in your regulations at the state? Equity has to be first.

I couldn’t agree more. Alright, we’re gonna take that last commercial break and be right back to wrap up our chat with Justinian Mason of Vangst Talent Network stay tuned.

All right, we’re back and we’re wrapping up our chat with Justinian Mason of Vangst Talent Network today.

Thanks for the really good talk. And I think the advice that you gave in the last segment will be really helpful, not just for those that are actually looking for a job in the industry but also the owners and those trying to grow their team. So thanks for that.

It makes me think about NCIA’s growth too. I’ve mentioned this on other episodes. I started working here in 2014, so five and a half, six years ago almost, and I think I was employee number five.

And we are almost at 30 employees also today, so it’s a scale up and it’s so rapid, and it’s so exciting though, in an our membership rosters. I think we’re in the hundreds at that time, and now we have nearly 2000 companies across the country and beyond as NCIA members and Vangst has been a member for several years now, as well.

I know you were at our Cannabis Business Summit and Expo in San Jose, that’s our biggest conference of the year.

Let’s just talk about Vangst Talent Networks membership and how you interact with NCIA and why being part of a national association that’s doing this advocacy work at the federal level is important for your company.

Yeah, it’s huge for our company because we’re a national company in some ways, we’re international company we work with companies at the Canada but because we are ancillary ourselves because we do support all verticals of the industry. Being a part of NCIA is a great opportunity for us to get in front of a lot of ancillary a lot of supportive businesses like us that we don’t normally get to talk to. I kinda see it is almost like that verified check mark on Instagram or Twitter, you see when I’m going through a company prospecting and I see that on their website. It’s almost like I relieve okay. And they represent at the right things, they’re going about it the right way, but also focusing back on fans.

I’m messed earlier. We’re impacting lives, we’re impacting the economy. I personally got a chance with a couple of team members to go out to the NCIA, lobby days in DC and have conversations with policy or policy makers and regulation makers about how what we’re doing staffing and recruiting is impacting the global economy and the industry. So that level of conversation, I don’t think that would have happened in the other capacity. So to be able to have that network in that reach through a is insanely valuable.

And I do wanna mention, there’s somebody on your team who is a member of our newly formed Diversity and Equity Committee, we have these member-driven committees like the marketing and advertising committee, the banking and finance committee, all that stuff, and we’ve added four new committees for this 2019 to 2020 term and one of those is the Diversity and Equity Committee. So shout out to the Vangst team member who is on our committee. And I look forward to working with them on some blogs and some podcasts.

Oh yeah, yeah, I wanna say That’s my partner Brett in Oakland or impact manager and as a talent resource as a recruiting resource, we wanna be that bridge that helps everyone have a fair shot absolutely appreciate that. So yes, lobby days love lobby days.

We’re already excited about next year’s lobby days. Of course, everybody start planning to go to DC next April or May, please.

I know it’s a long ways off, but it’s a big trip. But next month, actually, this month in August, and next month in September, we’ve got several smaller events going on. These are the nice evening networking receptions. It is free for NCIA members to register and attend and with the industry socials non-members can attend for a ticket fee but the cannabis caucus events are intended to be members only with an exception made, for a few people, maybe some guests here and there if you’re looking to join NCIA. So if you want to come meet NCIA staff and some local NCIA members please check out our website, the cannabis industry dot org and navigate to our events section. we are going to have our Heartland tour of our industry socials, we’re going to be there in Austin, we’ll be there in Minneapolis, Chicago, Saint Louis, Oklahoma City and Austin throughout the month of August, so registered today, if you’d like. To attend those. And we will also be doing our long running evening networking receptions called the cannabis Caucus, which is a little bit more policy focused with guest speakers, getting federal policy update in the presentation that is in September, and we will be in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Ann Arbor and Boston.

So mark your calendars head over to events section and start making your plans to join us there. And then of course our California focused conference which is the California cannabis business conference is coming up in October, so people are still trying to navigate what’s going on in California. This conference is focused on navigating that market. We’ll have 200 plus exhibitors and over 100 speakers, chatting so there’s some early bird discounts going on through August 31, pretty much half price half the door price. And now is a good time to grab those tickets.

Yeah, just any… And thank you again for being really active in NCIA and participating in this podcast, as well and I look forward to seeing you and your team, at some of our future events. So for those that are interested in learning more about Vangst where should they go on the inter-webs?

Yeah, you can check us out online at a Vangst dot com vangst dot com we’re on LinkedIn as well and then our Instagram is Vangst talent and Vangst talent on Instagram. But I’d say our website and have a lot of really great information and then I’m on a Instagram and LinkedIn as well. I’m likely the only Justinian you’ll find there. So, pretty easy to go look up.

I like it, I like it.

I just thought of this question before we wrap. Does Vangst mean anything? It does it stand for anything.

Yes, the correct pronunciation is Vangst, a Dutch word that means to catch, both for its a cash for capturing candidates and bring the industry. Yeah, I resolve a thank you for that.

There it for those who didn’t know our logo is a fish, I love it. Oh God, it all makes sense now, thank you for that.

Okay, well, thanks again for being on the show and thanks everyone for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice until next time.

Improving U.S. Military Veterans Quality Of Life Through Cannabis

Improving U.S. military veterans quality of life through cannabis with David White, Communications Director of Veterans Cannabis Project. VCP is dedicated to improving US military veterans quality of life through cannabis. They empower veterans to live healthy, fulfilling lives, while advocating on their behalf for unrestricted and supported access to medical cannabis through the VA just like any other medicine.

David is focused on helping U.S. veterans improve their quality of life through access to cannabis. He talks about his role there and his day to day, as well as what’s going on with the organization. We go through what’s going on with Veterans in the U.S. and why they need cannabis to address their health concerns.

Transcription:

Get informed get inspired and get connected.

Hello, thanks for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis Radio, I’m your host Bethany Moore, the communications Project Manager at the National cannabis industry association. Today my guest is David White, he’s the Communications Director of the Veteran’s cannabis project.

VCP is dedicated to improving United States military veterans’ quality of life through the opportunity of cannabis, the empower veterans to live healthy, fulfilling lives while advocating on their behalf for unrestricted and supported access to medical cannabis through the VA. just like any other medicine.

Thanks so much for being on the show today, David.

Well, thank you, Berthany, I’m pleased to join you in here today for your podcast wonderful, so let’s learn more about you First, let’s learn more about your background, what kinds of work you did in the past before finding yourself contributing your time to the cannabis movement for veterans.

Sure, my career has been focused primarily on public affairs advocacy efforts and working on Capitol Hill might have started out working at the Republican National Committee in their research department, and then spent about four years on Capitol Hill working in both the government, reform and Oversight Committee as well, as for Congress from Nancy Johnson as a press secretary and legislative assistant, where I started to get involved in healthcare issues, and then from thereleft Cap Hill and went to Edelman, which is now the largest public relations firm world, and help run public affairs and image campaigns for Fortune 500 corporations, and in street trade associations, companies, and trade groups like the American Health Care Association. And so our key aircraft and Walmart, the vast maracas a real wide variety of clients.

And then from there, I started my own consultancy, which continue today but didn’t really get involved with Veterans issues until I went to help out the presidential transition team and served as a media advisor, to Dr. David Chen, during his senate confirmation process, where I really got to see first-hand some of the challenges that the Department of Veterans Affairs was facing and particularly what America’s veterans were facing a lot of difficulties that they were experiencing. Returning from combat and I, I… A lot of the challenges and providing them the care they really need and deserve.

Wow, yeah, that’s quite a background. So you’re still based in Washington, DC, running around the beltway is that right?

I am, yeah, I still a creature of the swamp and fortunately… But it does provide for opportunities, to get deeply involved in advocacy for both for veterans and more broadly for cannabis reform, and those are two areas I’m very passionate about and glad that I’ve found a way to bring to them together to pursue them. Joint lying absolutely. And if you can stand the swamp of DC, it is a really great place to have access to all sorts of organizations, and government agencies and so on. And I’m glad I get to go back once a year, for MCI is lobby days in the very least, and see mild stomping grounds before I got wise away here to Denver.

So bad out here though, for sure. No, I can imagine. Love Colorado, yeah, yeah, and thanks for your work with veterans. My dad is also a Vietnam vet, former Marine, as well and he’s got his own stories of coming back from the war for sure.

So veterans need support for various things, including when they return from combat. There’s health issues and PTSD issues and some of these veterans would really like to use cannabis or find that it helps them. So was that realization sort of how you got involved in the cannabis industry, and movement through that intersection of veterans wanting to improve their quality of life?

It really was doing some work with the secretary chicken during his confirmation process. I got to really get a sense for how serious some of the ailments where they were afflicting our veterans the disproportionate rates of depression and anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain. When you look at the statistics, you can really see that veterans are truly in crisis in Department of Veterans Affairs themselves recognizes the 20% of the 27 million in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will experience Pete.

We see veterans coping with chronic pain and PTSD, at twice the rate of average Americans and really, 60% of veterans returning from combat suffer from product pain. So that’s an area where, obviously, with the opioid epidemic and the VA looking to try to address these problems by prescribing of the typical combat cocktail of drugs, we’ve seen that veterans are twice as likely as average Americans to die from accidental opioid overdoses.

So that’s one area in which both significant research, but certainly anecdotally we hear all the time that medical cannabis can be a far safer and even more effective alternative to a lot of the prescription pills that our veterans are too often prescribed as just a quick and easy solution in absolutely, yeah, that opioid crisis is something that NCIA certainly had on our radar. And a few years ago, we put a white paper out about cannabis being a possible solution for some people who would like to reduce the amount of opioids or phase out opioids from their life as well, if anybody wants to download that white paper it’s pretty easy to find. It’s at the cannabis industry org cannabis and opioids. So I encourage folks to download that and learn more about about how cannabis is being used to ease the opioid crisis.

Yeah, so here we are now, you’re running the veteran’s cannabis project team as the communications director and the organization focuses on helping veterans improve their quality of life through access, to cannabis. So yeah, tell me a bit more about your role there and your day-to-day. And what kinds of programs and activities are happening with the organization?

Sure, a lot of what we focus on is trying to bring veterans across the country to Capitol Hill to meet with their legislators to really provide the power of personal stories, so that they can hear from their constituents and see the really kind of life-changing benefits and positive impact that medical cannabis is had for a number of them, but then also get into a discussion of a lot of hurdles at many veterans face veterans are in a particularly difficult situation, particularly the nine million veterans who rely on the Department of Veterans Affairs for their healthcare since cannabis is scheduled as a Schedule 1 controlled substance, the Department of Veterans Affairs really won’t utilize it as a treatment option. They are barred by federal law from having physicians recommended from filling out any paperwork and depending upon which doctor you see they may not even discuss it with you. And a lot of the lingering stigma unfortunately read a lot of veterans to be reluctant to even talk to their doctor if they are using medical cannabis. One interesting stat that the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans of America found in one of the recent annual surveys was that one in five of its members uses medical cannabis but fewer than one-third of those users talk to their doctor about it, even when it affected use of other medications, so that stigma loan then… And some of the reluctance and fear, it creates some on veterans effectively denies them the benefit of the healthcare that they’ve really earned through their service and should be getting through the DA. So it’s another one of those areas that’s extremely frustrating and something that needs to change.

Yeah, for sure. And I heard something I’m not sure if it’s true, maybe you know that if a veteran getting medical care through the VA is tested for the presence of substances in their body and cannabis is found, they can lose their VA benefits, or something along those lines, do you know anything like that?

There is concern about that, there is a directive that the VA issue that basically says that they can’t be denied benefits, but that’s not been cat-aiding to law.

And so still there’s a lot of fear about that. And the other thing is concern about if they do test positive, for Canada, use that in their medical chart they will be labeled as having a Cannabis Use Disorder. So again, it’s another area of concern for veterans and something that for some of them may prevent them from pursuing healthcare and treatment that they really need. So it’s an area of stigma and change that we’ve gotta reform.

Absolutely agree and thank you so much for getting those veterans out to the Hill to meet with members of Congress and their staff to tell their stories in in the similar way that “ncia does with industry leaders and operators through our annual lobby days as well, that it really being a human being and being able to tell your story to a member of Congress is more valuable than a lobbyist, even though the lobbying is important also it is so important to get those veterans out there to tell their personal stories. So hopefully, we’re changing the hearts and minds one day at a time, out there in capital health.

We are going to take a quick commercial break, here, but we’ll be right back to chat more with David White, the Communications Director of Veterans cannabis project. So, stay tuned will be right back.

Alright. We’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, and we’re talking with David White from the Veteran’s cannabis project. So let’s talk more we’ve already done the overview, the 10,000 foot view of what’s going on with veterans, but let’s really take a deeper dive about what’s going on with veterans in the US, and why they need cannabis to address their many various health concerns depending on who the veteran is as well. As I mentioned earlier, veterans are really in crisis as one research shows that the chronic pain that they experience and PTSD are two major contributing factors to veteran suicides and we’re seeing on average 20 veterans committing suicide every day.

And So I… You look at those facts and you look at some of these statistics, and it really is quite frankly a national disgrace, if not.

And so we’re hoping, again, through some of these hill visits, potential capital Policy Forum that we’re looking to do in the fall, some of the grassroots networks that were building across the country that we can really raise awareness of this crisis and how medical cannabis can help potentially address a number of these ailments, and really saved a number of lives.

We hear every day from veterans to credit medical cannabis with.

I’m improving their quality of life or even saving their lives, and so it’s really a powerful testament to the healing properties of cannabis and the promises it holds for veterans and a better option than just hitting the alcohol bottles or self-medicating with whatever you can get your hands on. We obviously know by now that cannabis is far safer than alcohol, and various other substances, opioids, so we really gotta get this research to underscore what we know about cannabis and what we know from the personal stories of those who do use it. So getting that scientific research here in the US to prove that I think is gonna be pretty crucial, in this big picture.

So we don’t have enough research here in the US, we’re trying to circle around with Congress about how to make that happen.

Let’s talk a bit more about the challenges veterans face getting access. We’ve already talked about doctors not even being allowed to discuss it with them.

So where does that put veterans who really wanna use cannabis for what they need? Well, it leaves them obviously a disadvantage if they rely on the VA for their healthcare because they can’t go to the VA and talk to their provider about filling out paperwork and getting a recommendation even in states where it’s legal. So first and foremost, that’s one area that we’re looking to advocate and make change. Your point about research though is also critically important. We have a fair amount of data that shows the positive impact the medical cannabis can have but much more research is needed and again, because of the outdated policy and the mis-categorization of cannabis as a Schedule One substance, it makes research virtually impossible.

And so, we’re now preventing doctors and scientists from doing the content of research we need to have a better understanding of how medical cannabis can best help our veterans and other patients as well. So that’s really another core aspect of what we’re educating for in addition to providing veterans legal access to medical cannabis through the VA, right? So De-scheduling is really probably the smartest solution here for various reasons. Even taking it down to schedule to really wouldn’t do much on a lot of levels. So, I NCA advocates for completely de-scheduling off of the Controlled Substances list for sure and allowing it to continue to be an opportunity for small businesses. And I think veterans are also among a demographic of people who may want to work in the cannabis industry, if they have that ability. Do you think think that’s true?

They absolutely are. That’s another group of people that we hear from on a regular basis, it’s veterans looking to get into the industry and it’s something that our organization is looking longer term, and to being more involved in, it’s kind of to essentially serve as a jobs clearing house in recruitment center, both for veterans and employers.

There is as most of your membership is well aware. The employment opportunities, if we realize full legalization are just tremendous, I think I saw a stat for me. The Frontier data, they’re not long ago that said the industry would create 65-4000 jobs within eight years. And veterans, I think in particular are well-situated to be great employees in the industry, they really understand teamwork? And attention to detail and tend to be very highly responsible employees, and so it really could be an incredible match, and something that I think we need to pursue. Bo for veterans, and the industry, but that then gets back to veterans and some of the challenges they’ve faced, we’ve seen veterans who work in the industry be denied home loans for instance, and so there’s some concern and reluctance on veterans about getting into the industry. Fortunately, that’s beginning to be addressed in Congress. In fact, this week there’s amendment language by Congresswoman Katherine Clark Massachusetts, that would add language to the National Defense Authorization Act, to effectively in the practice of denying home loan benefits to veterans that work in the industry.

Oh, yeah, all that article. Yeah, that’s good news, yeah, no, it’s great news, and so… Yeah, yeah, so we’re making some progress in Congress. Is recognizing that a lot of the current policies and laws just don’t make sense, and so, we’re optimistic that it’s really a matter of time before there’s really critical mass that tips this over towards real progress, particularly in the Senate, which is we’re seeing the most resistance to make comprehensive reforms to federal cannabis law.

Yeah, we have some hemp farmers from Kentucky, that we’re hoping can soften Mitch McConnell up a little bit on our issues, so we’re… Yeah, the Senate is a little bit of a tough cookie, for the moment, but we’re pretty optimistic in the meantime.

Yeah, I was just thinking there’s a couple of NCIA members that I know for a fact our veterans and war, some of their military uniform pieces to lobby days. So shout out to Tom Mondo and at T-N-Fontana. Thank you so much for your service and being in the cannabis industry.

Are there any other bills or pieces of legislation in general, that veterans cannabis project is supporting right now, that we should be aware of?

There are few, there’s the Veterans Equal Access Act, which would effectively authorize the Department of Veterans Affairs to allow their providers, their doctors and other Hecate providers to make recommendations for veterans regarding participation in state Marijuana program. So if you have a VA facility, and a vet in a state where you have a legal medical program they would be allowed to both make the recommendation, and fill out to pay people work for that veteran.

So that’s high on our priority list, we also are supporting actively the VA medical cannabis Research Act of 2019, which would direct the VA to carry out clinical trials on the effects of cannabis focusing really on chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder.

That’d be a game changer. That it was great, it really could. And the VA is really uniquely situated to conduct this kind of research. They have some of the best researchers in the world and obviously deal with a patient population that’s disproportionately affected by chronic pain and PTSD. So, we’re optimistic that that’s gonna move forward hopefully in near future. And it’s something that veterans desperately need.

And then the other thing is really a bill sponsored by Congressman Greg via Florida. It’s Veterans Canada use for safe healing act he… And so effectively, confine law protection of veterans benefits, that are administered by the VA, so that there really is no concern that if you’re a medical candidate patient that you would jeopardize or potentially lose any of your earned benefits.

Got it, got it. That makes a lot of sense, yes. Looking forward to seeing all of those move forward, get co-sponsorship and hopefully we can see… See this Congress move, move these bills along in Capitol Hill.

Well, we have to jump to a commercial break really quick, but when we come back I believe you may have some testimonials from some actual real-life veterans about their relationship with cannabis that would be great to hear, so absolutely awesome. Okay, so we’re gonna take our last commercial break and we’ll be right back so stay tuned.

Alright, we’re back and we’re wrapping up our interview with David White from the Veteran’s cannabis project here on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice, so thanks for breaking down all the issues surrounding veterans and their struggle and difficulty getting access to cannabis for the issues that they’re dealing with, after coming home.

So I’m sure there’s some personal stories from working with these veterans about how cannabis has helped them. I’d love for you to share with our audience.

Sure, I’d love to a sample. Just a few of the veterans who have written into us and share their first name, not to give the way their identity to perfect or privacy, but for example, we heard from an army veteran, began in Sweden in Maine said I suffered a L1 compression burst fracture in the army and now fused from 2103, which is a significant portion of her spine the size chronic back pain, I started suffering from PTSD, neuropathy chronic sleep impairment, and migrants medical cannabis helps with all of these sides all of these effects it has also helped get me off. Opioids value in muscle relaxes and several other medications due to back injury.

Another one is Jennifer from III Gilbert, Arizona, rather who’s an Air Force veteran says, “I use medical cannabis daily. I was being prescribed 600 pills a month through over three years in the VA consuming 480 oxycodone in 201 days before ending all plug and transitioning to medical cannabis. I have regained my sense of self-quality of life and spirit back. I have been off all pills since mid-2016 and haven’t looked back late. Full story.

It is, it’s just an incredible… The difference it makes, and one last one, Aaron from Atlanta, Georgia, is a marine core veteran. Said I’m a veteran, and I use medical Canada to help with my PTSD and pain management. I have encountered several legal obstacles here in Atlanta. I have no legal access to something that helps my life tremendously. I don’t know what I would do without it. It works 10 times better than the MIDS provided by VA, so those… Yeah, if you some sense of really the personal stories of those who benefit from medical Canada and some of the challenges and again I think provides very powerful compelling personal stories when you have veterans as messengers for cannabis reform at the fetal level. And so it’s in addition to helping veterans, I think it’s also proven to be very helpful, for the calls overall to have them out front and carrying a message of the need to reform our federal law.

Absolutely, yes, cannabis is impacting positively the lives of so many kinds, different groups, different demographics of people.

Yeah, it’s really great, thank you for sharing those stories and thanks to the veterans that shared the stories.

So just to change gears just a little bit here before we wrap up the show.

There is a lot of talk about how CBD is the New Black, the new pink, everyone’s talking about their CBDs and you can get some kind of CBD from gas stations now, apparently, and it’s showing up on shelves, in all kinds of different health and hygiene products. So I think for people who may be aren’t ready to go into the full spectrum cannabis that includes THC and all the other cannabinoids, they are interested in a little bit of this hemp-derived CBD possibility, although the FDA hasn’t come in and said, We can put it at any food or anything like that, but it is interesting and I think there’s some hopefulness. There in our own Director of Public Policy Andrew Kline helped collect testimonies and we put our own statement together, and we submitted that to the FDA, when they put a call out for recommendations. So even though this is probably going to be a slow process, over the next couple of years before regulations get rolled out, it is… I’m optimistic that this is a stepping stone to get full cannabis-legalization-so we’ll see how that goes. What are your thoughts on that?

Well, I think it’s certainly a step in the right direction. I think seeing that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was on board, at least with him at this point, shows that we’re heading in the right direction. And so I think we have to wait and see where that goes, but I’m encouraged by it.

Same, same. Well, we all in waiting in this boat together, and we are indeed yeah, well, as we’re wrapping up the show here, I don’t know if you’re gonna be able to make it to San Jose, later this month, we are hosting our 6th annual cannabis business Summit, and Expo July 22 through 24th in San Jose. I’m really looking forward to it. The website to register is cannabis business Summit, dot com, and there’s also some great workshops, and tours and continuing education opportunities for those who attend as well. So if you have not gotten your tickets now would be a great time.

And I really wanna thank you for being on the show, and telling us what’s going on at your organization, as NCIA is proud to have partnerships and we have an allied associations program, and I think it’s important for all of us to keep focusing on the long-term goal… And we do that through various ways, through your organization, focusing on telling the stories of veteran through the, the need minority cannabis business association focusing on creating equity social equity in the cannabis industry, and then NCIA working on these federal pushes for scheduling and safe banking and fair tax codes. There’s so many issues and cannabis is such a big plant and affects our lives in so many ways.

So I just wanna say thank you, thank you, for the work you’re doing, thank you for the work, everyone that veteran’s cannabis project is doing and keep up the good work, and you’re always welcome to join us at our conferences or our regional networking events, the cannabis caucuses in the industry, socials which are a great way to get connected, get informed and get inspired and hearing stories about veterans who are improving their lives through cannabis is definitely in that inspiring category.

But thank you, Bethany, I greatly appreciate that and appreciate all NCIA does. To advocate for the industry, and look forward to working together further with you in the future.

Thank you, so much. And where can people find out more information about veterans cannabis project?

They can or… Website is www vets CP org that’s vets CP dot org. You can learn more about what we’re doing and explore potential partnerships with us, we’re always looking to team up with people in the industry for either event sponsorships, or other activities that we’re doing, so would encourage your members to visit and look for ways to work together.

Wonderful, alright, thanks again for being on the show and thanks everybody for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice until next time

State Level Symposiums On Hemp Throughout 2019

State level symposiums on hemp throughout 2019 with Christie Lunsford, The Hemp Biz Conference. Christie has been involved in the cannabis and hemp movement for more than a decade and provides consulting and education. She is currently holding state level symposiums on hemp throughout 2019 and hosting an add-on workshop called NCIA’s Hemp Biz Conference at our upcoming Cannabis Business Summit. Christie has also served as a consultant during the licensing, development, and formulation phases of multiple cultivations, medical cannabis centers and infused product manufacturers in California, Colorado, Illinois, and Washington State.

Recently, Christie successfully guided a client through a complex regulatory process to obtain one of the five medical cannabis business permits awarded in New York State. Prior to launching Endocannabinoidology, Christie distinguished herself as an industry leader by focusing on cannabis industry product standards. She served on the 2013 American Herbal Products Association (AHPA) Cannabis Committee, and currently sits on the Standards Creations Committee for both Infused Products and Cultivation of the Foundation of United Cannabis Standards (FOCUS).

Transcription:

Get informed get inspired and get connected.

Hello, thanks for joining us on another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio on your host Bethany Moore, the Communications Manager at the National cannabis industry association. today my guest is back on the show, I’m happy to have her back. Its Christie Lunsford she’s been involved in the cannabis and a movement for more than a decade and provides consulting and education as well, and on top of that, she’s hosting state-level symposiums on hemp throughout the year 2019 and most exciting hosting and add-on workshop to “ncia summer conference, it’s called NCIA’s Hemp Biz Conference, that’s the add-on workshop and it’s going to be at our upcoming cannabis business Summit and Expo in July. Christie, welcome back to the show,

thank you so much, Bethany. It’s great to be on, absolutely, so let’s catch up a little. You’ve been on the show before. It was a couple of years actually, but for those who didn’t get a chance to listen to that episode, I encourage you to do so, but let’s tell our listeners a more about your background and your experience even before being in the cannabis industry.

Sure, so, so if you go way, way back. I grew up in my father’s coin store in Grand Junction, Colorado which was a lot of fun being around all kinds of different coins and medals, but after I graduated from college, and came to Denver, I worked for a couple of different interior design firms, and I’m a bit of a fiber junkie. So my first experience with the cannabis plant professionally, was with have fiber.

Cool, yeah, as window coverings upholstery even hemp rugs that we put into high-end homes all over the US, but primarily in mountain towns in Colorado.

I wouldn’t mind a hem rug myself, the the test, yeah.

Okay, cool, well, thanks for taking us through that. But as I mentioned, you’ve been in the cannabis and hemp, world for quite a while. So, what’s your reason for working in the cannabis? And he move it movement. And what kinds of things have you been doing in this space, over the years?

Sure, so I migrated from into your design into cultivating marijuana under-House Bill 1284, back in the late teens and I loved to grow was my favorite thing.

But as the laws change I grew my business along with them, I held some of the first licenses with the City and County of Denver for cultivation and product manufacturing because I could not get a bank account. I became a founding member of national cannabis industry association, and I have that. Yeah, well I, I absolutely and I… If you’re in A or cannabis and you’re having banking problems certainly look at the only organization which really has a foothold in DC at working on being access and of course that’s in CIA. But having lost my big account, and I remember calling 30 different banking institutions, both credit unions and banks in 2010 trying to just obtain the basic services.

Yeah, I ended up selling those businesses due to a lack of banking and went to work for one of the major infused product manufacturing companies in Colorado, and that is where we launched the first CBD product line from hemp in 2012.And I found myself in a space where a lot of people knew what the where it was and they were very passionate about THC for all the wonderful medical benefits and relaxation … relaxation.

I was gonna say mind-expanding, but I like relaxation but benefits of THC, but literally only a handful of people in 2012 really understood the benefits of CBD as a health and wellness constituent of the cannabis plant. So I developed a course of study called endocannabinoid log and I was honestly just in the right place the right time with the passion and the skill set. But we were doing a weekly, monthly webcast for chiropractic and the naturopathic community back then.

Oh wow, teach them about the endocannabinoid system, how CBD worked, and then to place the CBD product, line in their offices.

So yeah, I’ve done a lot of different things. Cannabis has really been my life for the last decade. I do a lot of writing, I’ve been published twice my history of hand in the Kaiser magazine. It was a 5-part series in 2013 to 14, and then they used it in their national launch as an ad-free 12-page insert. So that was very cool I…

Yeah, and then, having such a broad base of understanding, I do a lot of consulting and application writing in emerging states. We want a New York license one of the five for our clients. Oh, congrats, thank you, thank you. That was … a long time ago, it was And you know, mentoring and just education so industry growing the cannabis industry through either one-on-one, or different educational courses that we do.

That’s awesome, thank you so much for everything you do. Oh that’s great. And of course, now that the Farm Bill has passed and now everybody seems to know what CBD is. It’s great to have somebody that has background on it and isn’t.

You can sort the truth from the falsehoods that are out there pretty quickly. I’m sure, absolutely and honestly Bethany, I don’t know what happened in February, it was like the CBD part of the industry just exploded over night and there was a lot of siting that needs to be done. But yes, as you were very… Where or watching the marijuana industry grows, you were right there in the mix when the site happened on the HC side of the plant. So we we’re five to six years kind of ahead of what this looks like in our knowledge base. Having just gone through that plant, so I… So true. Okay, so we’ve got a couple of minutes before our first commercial break, so let’s bring it back to the present. Yes, you’re hosting the state level. Had business symposiums they kicked off earlier this year in the state of Kansas, and I understand there were more than 300 farmers at this event plus plus the workshop that’s coming up at our event at our national conference. I’m sure it’s gonna be big as well. Tell me more about the symposiums and the workshop and what you can expect to learn at those events.

Sure, so Sue although I’ve been working both in cannabis, and in hemp for quite a while now, I really, I had a gut feeling that the Farm Bill would finally pass in 2018. and so I’ve transitioned a lot of my education over to The amide of things and after doing an assessment, of what was in the market there was no real there were lots of panels there, were lots of general conversations about what people were doing, but no real place for someone who was wanting to come into the industry as an investor.

So we start a new company to really learn the basics.

The Kansas symposium. And that was really tailored to what that market needed which was agricultural education and due to the vast network of professionals that I’m in touch with, I was able to find a farmer who had experience in two different climate Stones who had a three years of experience or in Hans.

And when you look at it in the “mindscape of prohibition of Hal has been in place for 81 years. No one knew had it, no one knows how to grow up, no one knows really what it needs, what it’s nutrient needs are, how to harvest, “what’s the best planting methodology? So we have taken a really cultivated program from Kansas to Michigan to Illinois and now we’ll be doing something similar with “ncia a cannabis at this summit, but it is really, it touches on so many things.

What are the implications of the Farm Bill?

How will it affect your business, if you are a cannabis farmer or looking to transition into hemp or soy being farmer sunflower farmer? I’ve learned so much about other crops like alfalfa.

The use Congress or at who knew these forms are all transferring their knowledge into growing Industrial Hemp and CBD. So we have a hemp segment on agriculture, we have everything from best practices. So that would be how to transport your crap. What are the extraction methodologies that work best product development for the CBD side of things? We have developed a module on FDA labeling and marketing to keep you in compliance there so you don’t get a letter or worse. Have your company shut down?

Absolutely, we talk a lot about market data, how to acquire new customers, basically everything you need to know to run a successful… And profitable hemp company, and there’s a lot to it. It’s not like you can roll out of bed and say, “I’m gonna make this happen. There’s a lot of knowledge that needs to be transferred.”

Absolutely great. I’m really looking forward to it at the cannabis business Summit, and Expo and again, if you’re interested, that is an add-on workshop called NCIA’s Hemp Biz conference and that’s on day one, of our cannabis business Summit and Expo.

Alright, we’re gonna hop on a quick commercial break, here, and then we’ll be right back to chat more with Christie Lunsford about Hemp and everything in between. Stay tuned

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice podcast, on cannabis radio, and we’re chatting with Christie Lunsford who is a hemp expert and is hosting business symposiums and workshops this year that if you’re interested in getting involved in the humor CBD industry this would be very valuable for you so Christie do let’s do a little background in history on hemp, how it’s been used historically I think you said it’s been 81 years since hemp was a part of our culture, more entrenched in it, anyway. And of course all the way to the present where the farm bill recently passed, which includes hemp production here in the United States. So, what does all that look like?

Sure, so I think it’s important for listeners to understand that hemp has been part of human kinds, culture since at least 3000, BC. He was regarded as one of the five grains in China, and it was formed as a major food crop.

The first paper was mashed. Hemp and Mulberry wood pulp and that literally was the first recorded paper, and that was in China as well.

So it’s not a new food it’s not a new medicine. And that becomes really important in the FDA conversation that I’m sure we’ll be having that it has been part of our culture. So, if you speed up to today, what are the implications of the Farm Bill? So basically the Farm Bill has been in the works for over 10 years. It was the 2014 Farm Bill.

Before it became the 2018 Farm Bill was signed into law on December 20 of 2018, and basically it legalize him for agricultural production, for both fiber and anything else, we’d like to make out of it. Primarily health and wellness products from CBD cannabis I… And it’s really a re-awakening of another industry. And I can’t tell you how lucky I have always thought I was that I got to be part of the emergence of the marijuana industry and I thought, “Oh box checked. We’re good to go. But this, the hemp industry is so much different because you can cultivate outside there. Are I assess manufacturers like Proctor and Gamble?

And Cover Girl, Estee Lauder. I’m not saying those specific companies are getting into hemp industry, but they are companies like that of larger, status and financial backing are all looking at how to access cannabis isles, and be part of a brand new market that we’re able to launch that is not just the minority which is the marijuana market, it is the majority. ’cause literally anyone can take advantage of the health and won benefits from CBD.

I can only imagine all the marketing teams of all the major companies across the country sitting around a board room, saying what’s missing.

I got it.

What’s that? Some CBD into it, the…

Put a Bird on it.

Yeah, I call it the… Just add water, affects… Yeah, I Agree

It’s great to take advantage of a trend, but it is not always appropriate for every product line. So we’re seeing it’s like an ocean really, like an ebb and flow, but it’s happening really fast, and of course it’s not that easy. There’s problems, there’s challenges to the hand CBD industry similar to cannabis. Do you think we’re gonna see that much of the loophole or maybe not loopholes, but barriers to entry banking problems unfair tax. What’s that gonna look like for him? It’s gonna be a little different, right, it is absolutely. So I would say for the main problem right now is there is no industry infrastructure. There’s no place to get seats if you are getting seeds and you’re planting. Are they… How many males are you going to have? How do you call your mails? There are significant issues surrounding the supply chain which is not built out transistor.

Yeah, how did dry… It’s not like in marijuana cultivation where you have a consistent crop that you are harvesting and drying huge batches every four weeks in most of the US Farm one hand crop at a time in the southern areas. You can squeeze into maybe three. So how do you drive tons of hemp CBD before, it’s processed? And then how do farmers find the extractors, and how do they transport the hemp as well?

So we’re seeing a instantaneous build-out of infrastructure and a lot of people are making money, but a lot of people are losing money, which is a huge concern of mine.

And then, in things like banking, access I was just in touch with probably 20 different farmers and CBD product manufacturers. Just yesterday having a conversation about banking access, right?

The banks are hesitant to bank him money, even though it’s federally legal, and they are waiting on communication for the communication from the federal government to clarify what the banking is.

Well, this is Mitch McConnell’s baby. So yeah, I’m sure he’ll help expedite that to the floor, but yeah, we’ll see.

Yeah, so it’s… We are in this gray period, where that responsible business people who are in it for the long run, can get their businesses set up and make a great deal of money before a lot of regulation comes in.

And the way you do that is you already build out your system to be in compliance of the regulation.

A couple of things I really wanna make people… Make sure people understand though is if you are farming crop insurance is very difficult to find right now, financial institutions are hesitant to bank ham and CBD money, the Department of Agriculture is waiting on all of the states to turn in their industrial production plans for hemp, so not… It may be legal for you to grow in every state, but you may not be able to obtain a license to grow.

Yeah, even though the Farm Bill removed him from the Controlled Substance Act. There are a lot of caveats to be paying attention to.

And then I have something that I like to call Mind the gap because this is… These are the gap years, so state-level regulation hasn’t caught up the Food and Drug Administration, we’re seeing a lot of conversation in this question and answer exercise that the FDA is doing with the industry and I’m very thankful to “ncia for having a voice in that. I was able to speak with Andrew just this morning about his work in having that conversation and he is actually one of our speakers at the hem is conference that is being held a cannabis business Summit, and that’s Andrew Cline, he’s the CIA Director of Public Policy. And then popping back into the mind gap conversation, the… I’m sorry, the DEA, the Drug Enforcement Administration, they have not yet officially… Rescheduled. HEB and I don’t know what the hold up is. So the inconsistency with the 2018 Farm Bill, the DEA is not formally on board yet to a… There are with a lot of questions comes a lot of opportunity. So if you are a legitimate business owner wanting to take advantage of getting into the hemp industry this is the time to do it. And I will say a lot of our friends who have done really well in the marijuana industry, they are looking for a safer place to place their money, and invest. And I’m seeing a lot of people who really understand creating a culture of compliance, doing really well in the CBD industry, they understand banking, compliance, they understand packaging and labeling the packaging, labeling and they understand how to run a business that is basically supporting that health and wellness conversation that we were talking about.

Right, right, absolutely. So yeah, interesting opportunity where the slowness, the glacial pace of the federal government, and all of their bureaucracy, it is. This is this opportunity to get a head before those rules roll out.

And you did write a really great blog post recently. I’d like to point out it lives on NCIA’s website, it’s called “How to build a successful CBD successful hemp CBD company. So I would definitely encourage readers to, check that blog out and there’s more information about how to get in touch with Christie and attend her conference in that blog as well. Well, we have to jump to a quick commercial break, here, but we will be right back to wrap up our conversation with Christie Lunsford. Stay

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, talking all things and CBD with Christie Lunsford. And in the last segment we talked a bit about NCIS involvement in providing public comment and testimony to the FDA when they put out a request for it on the topic of Haven CBD products. So as you mentioned, are somewhat new Director of Public Policy and Drew Cline led a coalition of dozens of individuals experts medical experts business experts to come up with testimony and recommendations for the FDA. So that’s really exciting and we’re glad to have Andrew for sure, and looking forward to on seeing what happens after the FDA kinda digest all that information for sure.

I would like to take a moment to look to the future look into our crystal ball dream of all the possibilities of him. It once provided humanity, all kinds of products, textiles here. He creates the future, but there’s all kinds of businesses and products that could pop up for people interested in investing.

We’ve already talked about all the CBD products at just a CBD health products. And create is such a cool idea. I think the uses in possibilities are kind of expansive. Can we talk about that for a minute?

Absolutely, I think from the root up cap was planted at Huron, Russia after the nuchal nuclear plant melted down as as to remediate. So … cannabis plants, have this remarkable ability to draw toxins from the soil. So hemp is not only going to be a food and medicine for the future. It also adds this other layer of sustainability to business development, which I find incredibly exciting. But I had it split up into three categories: flour, food and fiber.

So flower is CBD, and their manufacturing opportunities basically anything that touches the plant extraction, machines knowledge cannabinoid fractionation knowledge, product formulation quality consent and compliance and that’s the flower side of things, and food is delicious, but there’s a lot of technology that is needing to be developed there.

When you harvest hemp seeds, they’re very fragile and they need to be gently harvested and then drying the dealing. There’s so many things that we could add. ESET products for human consumption, seed cake and Amol, for animal consumption. And when I say So, point in pre-Very important point here, CBD oil is the medicinal Health and Wellness derivative hemp oil is the cooking and nutrition derivative of the absent the very different things.

So we’ve got flower food, and then the really exciting things that are happening in fiber amazing innovation.

So everything from the cortical on machines to break up the very fibrous, most bandit stands of industrial hemp, processing those fibers fast and core fiber development, and then taking these things into industrial applications, and that would be micro-fine Graphite for batteries, using the HEB plant as biofuel.

There are so many different opportunities, which exist in just making clothes, an oil and Kevlar like for law enforcement. I read a very interesting article on how we close our armed forces and the lowest bitters materials and how we fail them when they’re in the field because they’re cotton clothes just disintegrate in say a desert setting where the tensile strength of a had fabric would last for 10 times longer than… So there’s a lot of benefit to be added from utilizing happens.

So maybe you have a defunct paper mill in your town and there is no jobs and all of your teenagers are going to college and then not coming back to your community. Why not find an investor to start manufacturing have products at that mill?

And then from the supply chain of things there’s all that knowledge going into farming opportunities certified seeds understanding germination rates harvest opportunities in different farm equipment, they’re doing very well with the re-emergence of the hemp industry transportation and logistics, and then that conversation about supply chain management, banking, finance, insurance, the marketing companies really love Him because where a lot of them were not a more cautious, not wanting to get involved, they’re a very interested in, he and then education, government affairs. So the opportunities are numerous.

If we have fix a couple of things that are holding us back, which is this conversation around banking and finance, and then not being able to promote our heaven products on popular social media sites.

Totally, alright, yes, it sounds like here, no matter what your background is, you can probably apply it to this next new industry.

So how… That’s the cousin of marijuana? Awesome, well, we only have about a minute left here, but let’s wrap just first of all, mentioning our cannabis caucus event series is happening throughout the month of June, I personally will be at our Northeast cannabis caucus on June 27th in New York City so I look forward to seeing NCIA  members there.

And finally, in July is NCIA’s three-day conference, the cannabis business Summit, and Expo and as I mentioned, Christie is hosting the add-on workshop called The Hemp Biz Conference.

In the last few seconds here, anything you’d like to tell our audience about the Hemp Biz Conference certainly. So the best way to find out more about the have conferences on the cannabis business Summit, dot com website, go to the agenda and there’s a drop down button for pre-Summit workshops you can find all about the learning objectives that we will go through in our full day have education, and then get to understand who some of the experts speakers are who are coming in to educate with us and help you develop the hub industry.

Awesome, yes, if you’re at all interested in him and CBD add that workshop on to your ticket at the conference for sure. Alrighty, well thank you so much for coming on the show today, and really taking that deep dive into the human CBD world that’s emerging here, re-emerging, and I really look forward to the workshop at the cannabis Summit. Thanks for being on the show today, absolutely thank you Bethany for having me on, I really appreciate everything. National cannabis industry association is done for the industry.

We appreciate you, and thanks everybody for tuning in to NCIA’s cannabis industry voice until next time.

Allowing Exportation Of Cannabis Out Of Oregon

Learn more about allowing exportation of cannabis out of Oregon with Adam Smith from Craft Cannabis Alliance. In a career spanning more than two decades, Adam has been sole or collaborative founder of a series of successful non-profits and public policy campaigns, has served on the boards of directors for statewide and national civic engagement organizations, led teams of nurses in collective bargaining negotiations across Oregon, lobbied members of Congress and state legislatures, advised non-profit and for-profit clients on a range of issues, and was a founding partner in a company bringing Pacific Northwest craft beer and artisan wine to Hawaii.

Adam’s writing on drug policy and civic engagement has appeared in more than 40 print and online publications, including REASON Magazine, The Guardian UK, Mother Jones Online, Alternet, and The Razorwire. He has also produced chapters for the books Busted; Stone Cowboys, Narco-Lords, and America’s War on Drugs, Drug Trafficking and How To Get Stupid White Men Out of Office. Oregon is seeking the legislative process surrounding allowing exportation of cannabis out of Oregon, we speak about that process and much more. 

Transcription:

Get informed get inspired and get connected.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of NCIA’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio. I’m your host, Bethany Moore and I’m the Communications Project Manager at the National Cannabis Industry Association. It’s my pleasure to introduce my guest today, Adam Smith of the Craft Cannabis Alliance, and so much more based in Oregon. Great to have you on the show today, Adam, 

Hi Bethany, thanks so much for having me

I’m looking forward to talking more today about what’s going on in Oregon but let’s start by learning more about you and your background and what kinds of experiences you had before getting involved in the cannabis industry,

That’s a lot of years to cover, so we’ll do it quickly. I really come from the pulsar movement. Originally I got involved in drug policy reform in the early ’90s and ended up in the early days at a place called Drug Reform Coordination Network “derna which is now StopTheDrugWar dot org, and I started publishing a weekly news magazine covering the drug or a drug policy from their form perspective, and it was really early in the days of the internet, and there wasn’t anything like that out there, and so it really became an interesting Center, where we were covering again, I was getting to interact with him, speak with people doing Needle Exchange and prison reform and cannabis and psychedelics and it was just incredible experience and during that time I present, could inside the Higher Education Act which eliminated federal financial aid eligibility for any student for any drug conviction. So if you had gotten home in the Dima when you were 15, you were lifetime now, ineligible for federal financial aid? And so we launched a campaign we put out a resolution, and we launched the campaign, through students that were on our list and sent them a resolution to go to your student governments in you Administration and get them to sign on to this and the response was amazing. And we had dozens of campuses started to organize, and out of that, we launched something called Students for sensible drug policy which is still around. And some listeners may know or maybe alumni. 

And in 30 countries, which I did not grow it to that. So that’s where I come from. And years in between, I’ve done other non-profit work and civic engagement and expanding vote by mail and I’ve worked for labor unions, but a couple of years ago, a few years ago, when things got legal here, I got really interested in diving back into drug policy and it was watching, watching the industry begin to emerge here from the medical community and from the Elisa world and, and it became clear that we needed to organize and so we started the CRF contest line and now I will get too far as in like “We’re gonna… I guess we’ll talk about that, but that’s really my background. And so I come to this from the policy side, but I think that how legalization happens and how the industry emerges is really important on the policy side, as we look to end the drug war in addition to making cannabis available to folks. 

Yes, that is great. I love hearing that. I’m familiar with Stop the drug war. And of course I think a lot of people in the industry have heard of SSDP, students for sensible drug policy which is headed up currently, by the lovely Betty Aldworth… Alright, we’re so happy to know and love Betty. 

We do go to speak to or tomorrow, I’m doing a podcast with Betty tomorrow on marijuana today with Chris Lawler and Grant-hood Stan Goldman and so I’ll be talking about I…

Oh that’s great, oh yeah.

So, SSDP, is a great organization to support if you’re looking to support an organization that’s not industry per sale, and you wanna do the grassroot stuff. SSDP, is literally creating the cannabis industry’s future leaders. Some of these people are probably gonna go into policy or start their own businesses or in some way, shape or form do something once they graduate college, to serve the cannabis industry, so that’s great, thanks for telling us about your background there. 

So you mentioned you got curious about cannabis again that… Once legalization in Oregon, hit, and you formed the craft cannabis alliance is that right?

That is true, yeah, it’s really interesting. I had a little detour from policy and did some work with a friend of mine who’s in the wine industry, and he was bringing craft beer and artisan wine from Oregon in the Pacific Northwest to Hawaii, and I got to go over there and do a bunch of work with that, and it became clear to me what the Craft brand meant and what the Oregon brand meant. And so when I got back from doing that everyone was talking about this is organs next grade craft industry and I sort of looked around and thought Well maybe or it could end up being a dozen Canadian arouses that wipe everybody out and that seemed to be headed possibly in that direction. And so as an organizer, I thought, Well, we should lift up the craft industry we have it here, but the first thing we need to do is identify what that is. We sort of know it when we see it. And it really came down to folks that are companies that were majority locally owned, that were connected to communities, and that Sara set of values, and those values really came down to people who are committed to ethical business and employment practices to sustainability to positive community engagement and to ending the drug war.

And if you were local, and you and those were values you shared, then as far as we were concerned, you were part of the craft industry here and so… And so we started to do that and do that organizing and initially we thought, Well we should tell… Oregonian, that there’s a difference between everything is grown in the state, but there’s a difference between cannabis that’s grown by local farmers incomes that’s grown by Toronto bank account, no offense to the Canadians who are our friends and that folks should support the local which is actually a real strong Oregon value. We really do support local businesses, and so we thought we need to let people know that there is a local industry here that’s values driven, but over the first three harvest or so the glut became so bad that it became clear that even if every Oregonian the state, but nothing but local, it still wasn’t gonna save the local industry, they’re just the prices that crashed, and it’s interesting organ. When we legalize cannabis we did something or did something that was very wise I think, and very Aragon in which is… We legalize the industry, we had right Oregon and Northern California have been the producers of the vast majority of domestically grown cannabis for as far back as anyone can remember, right? And so the time Oregon legalized for adult use they had a 20 year medical we had a 20-year medical program here and literally generations of growing before that, and so we had 3500 riders to medical growers and we knew we had thousands of register growers, and the state rather than try to go corporate and say, show us that you have 20 million and you can have one of a dozen licenses. They actually organ-made licenses cheap and Unlimited and actually ran a marketing campaign aimed at growers that called go legal. And the message was, we know you’re out there, whether you’re registered medical you’re not registered at all, come in out of the cold, come be part of the legal industry, and I… Yeah, and that was important because cannabis has been such an important economic driver in some of the poorest rural and agricultural regions of the state and it particularly since timber sort of went out and so this was important. And so rather than try to wipe that out, which of course, eight years of pro-“bih in invite it in, and thousands of people jumped in and put everything on the line to be part of this legal industry.

What we didn’t think through entirely when we legalized the industry we had here, the industry we had here was an export industry and had always been an export. strum Sadat yeah, suddenly all about cannabis and more was now hemmed into a market of 39 million people and Oh my goodness, we have a million extra pounds of cannabis. How did that happen, right? 

And so, now we start talking about, Oh, there’s an over-supply problem.

But the framing of this is important, it’s not really an over-supply problem, it’s a market access problem and because if cannabis like every other legal product that is produced in the state of cannabis could be sent into other markets that desire it, we would need every ounce of cannabis, we could produce under current licensure and we’d probably have to expand licensing here. Yeah, gotcha. So, crannies, Alliance, is working to focus on the craft Oregon growers and support that locally controlled craft industries. What it sounds like, right? And it’s not just growers, it’s producers, it’s all licensed types but the truth is what we’re looking at is that Oregon and Northern California are really the only sort of indigenous scaled up-producing region in the country, right? And so, there’s something here that’s important that’s connected to communities that is connected to this incredible talent base, and this incredible ? grow some of the world’s best and because of this oversupply in the price crash and because of the lot we are the folks that are really hurting here, and the folks in California, I think that are going to be facing the same thing soon. Are the locals are the folks that don’t have access to capital markets, right? And so, we have when the over supply problem happen I started to say the framing is important ’cause if we call it over-supply, then the answers we come to are all hurt farmers. How do we have fewer of those people or fewer licenses, and how do we make them produce us? But when we understand that it’s a political problem in a market access problem answers, we come to are more expensive. They are, how do we get our political leaders to stand up with us in demand that we’d be able to access other markets as we have always done, absolutely.

And so we began the process of moving toward licensed Interstate transfers, between legal states and the FIA. Let’s definitely talk more about that. “After the commercial break, we do need to give some time to our sponsors. So, hold that thought, We’ll be right back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice, stay tuned

We’re back on cannabis radio, and we’ve been diving in with Adam Smith from the craft cannabis Alliance about what’s going on in Oregon and how it produces some really great cannabis as does Northern California, but there are some federal prohibition, issues, of course, that are preventing the market from truly driving. 

So let’s talk more about that. 

From what I understand, Oregon is seeking a legislative process at this point surrounding allowing exportation of cannabis out of the state, which you mentioned before the commercial break. So let’s back up and talk more about how all this came about. Oregon is overflowing with cannabis. It’s growing faster than it can be consumed by Oregonian is that right?

Try as we might… Yeah, that’s funny. So there’s plenty of legal issues to be surmounted. It’s important to talk about the current state of federal prohibition, which doesn’t allow cannabis to cross-state lines, I believe that was lined out in the Cole Memorandum as well, even between legal states. So you can even between California, Washington and Oregon, you can’t even move it between those states.

So these are creating these standalone markets that literally only serve itself within state lines and try as you might, as you said, I get it so what is the impact it’s having on the farmers and the dispensaries?

Well, obviously here we have seen prices crash and so that has made everything very difficult for everyone. The product makers, and the farmers particularly or stuck in… Or stuck as long as its producer or stuck into a very small market.

And the truth is we need to look at when this came about, and it became clear that we have an economic crisis going on, here we are looking at between rest is we’re looking at between half a million and a billion dollars in local capital that is in the process of on the verge of or at risk of being wiped out, and that’s not like Nike’s local capital or Intel’s local capital that is farmers and small investors and entrepreneurs and families and friends and people who were homes, businesses, and a lot of that is centered in some of the poor regions of the state. And initially, people thought… Oh, well, that’s just capitalism but it’s not capitalism is we have a great product and we can send it to New York and they send us money and it’s legal is capitalism, we are prohibition, right? And, prohibition distorts market and causes all kinds of unintended consequences, and so some of the unintended consequences that we are looking at are not only the economic crisis that’s happening here, but the fact that there are places in the country that are now looking at growing cannabis at scale where it’s environmentally unsound, or even totally responsible to force that to happen.

We have states, we are working with some patient access groups in Delaware where it’s legal to be a medical patient but there’s no real access to clean-tested quality medicine, and a state like Delaware is unlikely to suddenly spring up a huge production industry, with bio-diversity and different products and so see if cancer patients in states that cannot get access all medicine while we have a million pounds of the world’s best cannabis sitting and rotting on shelves on the other side of the country. So, you, on a “parsa yeah, so you have a patient access issue. And the other thing that we have is a real economic issue within the industry, which is when the walls eventually come down, whether that’s in two years or five years or seven years when federal probation ends. No, you are not going to be able to keep products from one state out of another state. We can’t keep California oranges out of Florida, right?

The protectionism doesn’t actually exist in the wild, in our system, it only exists here as a remnant of a dying probationary regime.

So right now if New York legalize and New Jersey legalize as an Illinois legalize and Connecticut lives each of those states will invest billions of dollars into redundant production capacity that is not economically competitive necessarily or environmentally sound that when the walls come down, will be faced with competing against cannabis that’s going to come from places that it actually grows and so it is insane, economically to make that investment to move forward as if each state is gonna be its own site. I’m not the future of the industry is 50 state self-contained production.

Totally, that leads me to my next question. Obviously, the solution here is to allow delicious or in Canada to be exported to these places that you’re saying maybe don’t have a great climate or maybe is it a mature market and would be redundant? So let’s talk a bit more about the benefits of exporting and what would that look like? You already mentioned that patients would have access to safe, clean tested medicine, but what other benefits come about? If we were to allow a state crossed exporting well, you would avoid real economic harm, a real environmental harms in Florida, they need to dementia giant spaces in Nevada. They’re using water in the desert, right? And so, you would… Cannabis is a resource-intensive crop, but it doesn’t need to be as resource intensive as it is in many of the states where you would have to try to grow it.

Sure, and so I always say You can grow avocados, in New York, if you want, you can build a facility, it’s just a bad business decision for overs farm of avocados. Apparently, she has an avocado farm. Now, really, maybe we can talk on a growing some cannabis maybe your listening you got a spot for you, so I… So that is, those are the benefits and also being able to move product, between states will also make it easier for more states to decide to legalize right faster because you won’t have to set up an entire production industry, as a states know how to regulate retail and distribution, right? And we can do that. And on the other side of this on the law enforcement side, even on the prohibitionist side, they’re concerned right now and it’s gonna get worse as California continues to come online. Is this oversupply in, this lot and product leaking out into elicit markets. But if your answer to that is to say, “Oh we’re concerned about over-supply or we’re concerned about diversion and our answer to that is to make sure that New York and count and Connecticut and Illinois all have to create their on industries. You’re gonna flood the country Sur with unnecessary condoms, and then you’re gonna then it’s gonna be 10 times worse than you’re linois. Totally get it, yeah, yeah. And so from all sides of this, not us from the reform side, from the industry side prohibition to store markets and creates on attended content months the way markets actually function is stuff is produced where it is best and most efficiently produced and it is sent to places where it is, where it is desired commons on as a… And so this is actually the future. And so our goal right now is how fast can we make that happen so we can, if New York legalized tomorrow, it will take them years, the bill shelves with quality products, we could move millions and millions of people out of illicit markets years sooner, than we would otherwise, do if we could just move product across these imaginary lines in. So we get to here is the campaign and we think we have a pretty direct path to do this by 2021 and that is the goal.

Awesome, yes. So what does that path to allowing exportation look like from here that you probably have to work with the Governor and when are champions in Congress in DC, like Earl Blumenauer and run wide and in the senate, yeah, we have a great benefit here of having Senators like Merkley, and Wyden and members of Congress like Blumenauer.

It’s just incredible they’ve really been leaders and I try to con… Out to them any time I can. They are real champions for not only the industry, but for social justice and criminal justice and common sense and lately agree, yeah. And so, here is the path.

So we have a bill right now in the Oregon legislature that will give the executive branch, probably through the Liquor Commission, authority to approve out-of-state transfers, under agreement with other states, because it’s not federally legal, there’s federal there are no federal guidelines and so you could only do this under agreement in an Anita. My state, right? And the agreements are not complex it’s… We will accept your testing requirements you will color to our labeling requirements, but you need to set the framework for how these exchanges happen, right? Yeah, and so we have in the last eight or 10 months, we’ve really changed the understanding of the issue here among our political class. They understand that the future of this industry for Oregon success in this industry includes exporting products and that this is the obvious way to move forward. And so we believe that the bill will pass now the bill requires that the fire obviously, we need two things we need another state that wants to bring product in and we also need some level of permission or tolerance from the federal government if the federal government is going to mow everybody down and put them in prison, no two governors are gonna send people out to do that it… But we wrote the legislation very broadly, so that we can do this. If the federal government gives direct permission which would be through federal statute or indicates tolerance, which can be through a Department of Justice memo or policy statement. We write these memos we… It’s been helpful, they been helpful, right? This is all that the entire industry is running under right now. It’s not even a memo, it’s a deceased memo, it’s just the outline of the federal government, saying, “Look if you’re operating on your state laws and you’re doing it responsibly we are not gonna use resources to prosecute that and so we are aiming at making it obvious that state that license transfers between consenting states it is an obvious part of protecting the state industries.

It is smart policy and so we are pushing in the congressional side so that we can get licensed Interstate transfers, included in whatever bill is going to move forward, that will protect the state industries right now, let me back up and say There is a path for this through the Republican Party, and it involves re-talking about free markets and capitalism and how that smooth things out. But their Pelican Party right now is a little bit chaotic, so it’s a little difficult to know how sure that path is, but there’s also a path through the Democratic Party which feels much more straight forward which is we talk about the environmental insanity of forcing every state that legalized, is to grow cannabis. We talk about patient access we talk about small businesses being crushed here, and a lot of democratic issues, right? We told up moving people out of a list markets faster, things that will resonate with Democrats and then we head toward the 2020 election in which cannabis is going to be a major issue.

Yeah, and so we need to tell this story so that when the Democrats take over, it is part of their understanding of the smart way to protect the stand undersea even if the Democrats took over both the Senate and the White House, I believe it will still take them several years to really work out how to end federal prohibition, but I believe that they will immediately stand up to protect the state industries on… Alright, let’s take our last commercial break here in the… Come back and talk more about the… Is it the one fixed cannabis campaign?

It is, although you… Right, yes, yes, so, alright, we’re gonna talk more about that. We’ll be right back. Stay tuned, NCIA’s cannabis industry voice will be right back

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice and we’re wrapping up our chat here with Adam Smith from the craft cannabis alliance based in Oregon and we’ve been having a pretty exciting conversation about the future of Oregon and the future of exporting delicious cannabis to states that may not have access yet may not have mature markets, and doesn’t make sense for them to invest billions of dollars to try to reinvent the wheel in that state. So we’re talking about, it’s called the one-fix-campaign Senate Bill, I bet to it is a to in this legislative session and it’s co-sponsored by our friends over at the Oregon retailers of Cannabis Association, as well.

Day and was re-as well. Yep, and they’re a great all awesome. So if any listeners want to learn more, it looks like the website is www spelled out on e16 cannabis org. Awesome, so I appreciate the crafts Alliance pushing that and it makes good sense. 

You’re doing the math and yeah, it makes perfect sense to me. And it is forward-thinking where we’re looking at a world where we’re moving past this state by state limited Pro… A bit on the scenario, right? And so just to finish up the thought… So, the aim is, again, there is definitely a path through the Republican Party and as my name being Adam Smith, I get to talk about capitalism and markets, and we get a lot of really good response to that as well. But for the Democrats, if the Democrats take over the Senate, I believe we can make this such an obvious part of protecting the state industries that we can get licensing at transfers amended to whatever they decide to pass in Congress to protect the state industries. But if they just take over the White House, I believe that we can get a democratically appointed Attorney General, will almost certainly write a new memo protecting the state industries explicitly, and we wanna make sure that this is included and again, we’re not talking ’bout opening the gates for anyone to send it anywhere. We’re talking about licensed Interstate transfers, between consenting states and I… And there’s a consumer side to this, which is, consumers in all of these states are about legalized deserve access to the best products in the world from Oregon and California and elsewhere are why exactly would we stick? You can get the best of everything in New York. Why would they not why would they have to be stuck with with cannabis, that was third rate.

Sure I… Yeah, so, if listeners really wanna get involved, does it make sense for them to reach out to their senators and members of Congress and tell them to support this?

Yeah, so I, I… Yes, that yes, he has yet.

You had… The other thing is the exciting thing is that now that we’ve sort of gotten the Oregon side nailed down, I try to be careful and knock on wood, when I say that, ’cause I love to pass it, but it feels like we have a lot of momentum and we’re very confident we’re gonna pass this and our Governor Brown is gonna design it and we are hopeful that she will stand up and be a national leader on this issue. But the next phase is we are, I am now, we are now starting to bring in our partners. Whether that’s in California to start talking with folks about supporting export, because their over-supply is gonna dwarf organs over supply in a couple of years.

Yeah, I and I, or… But also, skates to find our allies where there’s a desire to bring cannabis and yeah, I… And so we need a partner once we have a partner that is advocating to bring it in, now we have the German Federal question that we can bring to the federal government and whether that’s lobby in Congress or an attorney general, and that’s everything so awesome Les. Reach out to us. If you are anywhere in the country, and this interest you from the export or the import side, we wanna talk to you and we’re in building the network for this.

And so speaking of talking to our law makers before we wrap up the show here in a minute, of course, wanna talk about NCIS annual lobby days. It is happening May 21st, 22nd, and 23rd in Washington DC and we have hundreds of “ncia members from all over the country that have signed up and are joining us to walk the halls of Congress to educate our members of Congress on all kinds of issues that affect our industry like banking… 280E, social equity, the CBD veterans, medical access and exportation is probably gonna come up to… So, I in…

I also wanna point out that the craft cannabis Alliance, as well as the Oregon retailers of Cannabis Association, are part of NCIA’s Allied Association Program.

Happily, so yeah.

So just briefly tell us about what it’s like and what the purpose of the program is from your perspective, and how it’s gonna benefit our industry.

Oh, it’s terrific because you can organize in your state, and because the industry is so state segmented, it’s very easy to be isolated in what you’re doing, and somebody there needs to be an entity like If NCIA didn’t exist, it would have to be created, right? There needs to be an entity that is looking to pull all of this together, all of the folks working on this and engaged in this and it just makes everything we do more powerful. I don’t know, it’s also an incredible knowledge, resource and experience resource that we can bounce things off folks who are… Got in it as well, so I… And I’ll be better.

And you are a resource too, it’s a mutual exchange of information, we learn from you… Boots on the ground, and we give view resources to help your association thrive as well and give you federal advocacy information. So thank you for being a part of the program. It’s going well. Rachel Kurtz is our program manager for that and awesome by the way, a love Rachel. Yes, we’ve got a lot of good industry veterans here and in our industry, including yourself, so thank you for being involved in drug policy and cannabis reform for as long as you have, and we’ve made some progress over the years as we can see. 

Yeah, when I first got involved, I think 19% of the country or 20% of the country thought cannabis should be legal. And we were the crazy radicals. It turns out we were just pretty mature. Moderates yes, yes. I had friends, 10-15 years ago, who were a little afraid to associate with me when I started talking about cannabis ’cause they have government jobs in DC and I’m like, “It’ll be fine”, and now one’s everyone’s pretty much like, “Oh cool,” so yeah, anyway, off we go into the future and the future is bright, I think. So thanks again and if any listeners want more information, had to craft cannabis Alliance dot org to connect with Adam.

 The one is a… Yeah, thanks for being on the show today, I am really appreciate it, definitely, thank you so much and thanks to NCIA, for everything you guys, do thank you.

Can’t wait to be back in Oregon, soon. It’s one of my favorite states. Alright, okay, thanks everybody for tuning in until next time.

Disadvantages The U.S. Has In Cannabis Legalization

In this episode, we discuss disadvantages the U.S. has in cannabis legalization with Oscar Velasco-Schmitz of Dockside Cannabis. Aaron Varney, Maria Moses, & Oscar Velasco-Schmitz are the heart and soul of Dockside Cannabis, and the reason the company exists. All of them stem from backgrounds in either business, technology, or both- and their unique stories are what brought Dockside to life. In 2009, Oscar had been advocating for cannabis rights for years and was able to establish lasting relationships with people and policymakers like city attorney Pete Holmes, which helped to shape bits of the conversation around what cannabis policy for Washington could look like.

He later connected Maria with someone who ran a medical collective, and the two of them agreed to move forward with their own cannabis shop. The U.S. is basically falling behind in the global market now with other countries legalizing cannabis for adults or at least medical use, and of course, they’re not subject to U.S. tax laws. They discuss if the U.S. is at a disadvantage due to these restrictions, as well as the fact that we’re seeing cosponsors on our legislation from BOTH sides of the aisle, both democrat and republican. That’s due to our industry getting out there and educating them about our issues and putting a personal face on it. They speak about what kind of anecdotes or research we need to be sharing with those who are not yet supporters of our issues.

Transcription:

Get informed get inspired and get connected. 

Hello, thanks for tuning in to another episode of NCIS cannabis industry voice from your host Bethany Moore. I’m the Communications Manager at the National cannabis industry association today, I’m happy to introduce my guest based in Washington State Oscar Velasco of Dockside Cannabis, welcome to the show, Oscar.

Good morning, Bethany, I’m very happy to be here, thanks for having me, absolutely great to connect with you. 

So for our listeners, let’s get to know you a bit more, let’s talk about your background and any experiences you had before finding yourself serving the cannabis industry, running Dockside cannabis.

Yeah, sure, well thanks for this opportunity to share a bit about myself. I’m a native of the beautiful cosmopolitan city, known as Mexico City. And my mother and I immigrated to the United States when I was two-years-old and so I’ve been privileged to be raised by culturally, and bilingual my entire life, and certainly that’s had influences on my thinking and just knowing that there are other cultures and other modes of communication and understanding besides the dominant paradigm. 

Leaving Mexico City, we moved to California and it was it the contrast because I was raised in an agriculturally rich and very rural region, of the SAN Laine, a Valley in California, so very, very stark contrast to a busy metropolitan city and one of the advantages of… Of being raised in this agricultural region was the access to the politics that were happening at the time. 

My step-father was very involved in the United Farm Workers at a very… When I was very young, and I was exposed to political movements, and thinking and strategies and tactics and so at a very young age, I understood that to be able to make a significant impact, you needed to organize and mobilize resources and so that was great. I very quickly learned that farm living, was not necessarily something I wanted to do my entire life so I pursue education and I really took to, I really took to traditional school and that found me at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and here in California, in general, has a very, very long and rich history of Cannabis culture and cannabis exposure, both production. And how do I say, that’s just like the sight of cannabis has definitely been inculcated throughout many, many decades in California.

Sure, the culture. And specifically in San acres California. And for me, that was the first place that cannabis use was really normalized and where I was made aware that Okay, it’s, “this is not, this is not the devil’s weed.

Growing up in the Central Valley in the sand Working Valley. There was definitely a very conservative political mindset, and the dominant paradigm was to teach children that drugs were bad, that was there was no other narrative there.

Just drugs are bad. While the DARE rallies were fine and everybody had a good time and it was an opportunity to take a field trip with your classmates. It was a bit of an indoctrination.

And so for me, having been exposed to the culture of Cannabis in Santa Cruz not all of Santa Cruz is this way, but a lot of the folks that I hung out with, that were responsible and respectful cannabis users, really, really helped to form my ideas about that. And just a bit about the background of my studies in Santa Cruz, I was lucky enough to study theoretical linguistics and education and philosophy and history of human consciousness anthropology, psychology, sociology a number of different topics. But what I ended up majoring in and doing research work in theoretical linguistics.

C is what ended up bringing me to Washington State. I worked on a project and somebody at the Natural Language group at Microsoft took interest in my work and I had my first interview for the Microsoft Corporation in Atari, in half Moby California. 

I… It was kind of an interesting set of circumstances, but little did I know, going to Santa Cruz, I went there to study math and then dear friend said, Oh yeah, think you’d really like linguistics, you should check out a couple of classes. And I did and I fell in love and loan. Behold, University of California, Santa Cruz has one of the top Linguistics departments in the world. So I was exposed to a very sophisticated level of thought technique and really just the scientific method with regard to, with regard to language, and so that led that led to that led to my career in software here in Seattle.

Yeah, when nothing I’ve been exposed to cultures and politics and travel and art. And while at Microsoft, I studied business and economics, through mentorships and I’ve always been interested in civic structures, and so naturally with all of the culmination of all of those things, I started researching cannabis, law, and I began writing white papers, presenting, them to friends that were policy makers here in Seattle and LA, and behold all of them said “Well this subset, what? You’re kind of crazy, but this is logical, this makes sense. And so a group of other very brave and folks that had the courage of their convictions to speak truth to convention we began forming a commercial model for medical cannabis here in Washington State. 

Okay, when was that, what year was that? 

That was in the year 2000… Late 2010, early 2001, got it right, yeah, and… And even before Washington State, I had medical cannabis laws. Thanks to then Senator Gene Colwell, in 1998, just three years after Prop 215 in California, and just to circle back, while I was in Santa Cruz, I ended up meeting the grandfather of a good friend and the gentleman was… You must have been in his late 80s, maybe early 90s and I was very well for himself. He was an executive at the Safeway corporation, kind of a conservative guy, at least from appearance, but his attitude in 95 was… Oh yeah, yeah. marijuana should be should be absolutely legal.

So that was also a paradigm shift to me is seeing an elderly person who was well-educated and very successful in their career, not necessarily dread lock working at Aalto Creamery exposing that the cannabis was the source for good.

So anyway, to say that the cannabis movement in Washington State has been strong for a long time, even before medical cannabis, we all know that the husband parallel markets reconciling demand-supply paradigms for cannabis for a very, very long time right, so having medical cannabis statutes in whatever jurisdiction allowed for a vehicle to have patient advocacy and to speak up and to say, “Hey we really we want to use this for medical purposes, and we should be allowed to do so and you can see there’s been a lot of… There’s been a lot of movement in that space it is. And now with the adult use initiatives that have passed through multiple jurisdictions in the US and across the globe right right, and now there’s adult use cannabis for adults over 21 in Washington and you run the dispensary called Dockside cannabis.

I’m honored to I’m honored to serve as a founder of Dockside cannabis. Yeah, this is true. And we have four stores in the Seattle Metropolitan area, and I don’t know, great where honored to serve patients and adult use consumers.

Fantastic, great thanks for telling us more about your background there. We’re gonna take a quick commercial break and then we’ll be right back to chat more with Oscar from Dockside cannabis. So stay tuned in NCIA’s cannabis industry. 

Alright, we’re back on NCIA’s cannabis industry voice weekly podcast on cannabis Radio, I’m your host Bethany and we’re talking with Oscar from Dockside cannabis based in the State of Washington, Oscar. So tell me more about what you’re doing these days, today in the Seattle Metro area. You mentioned, of course, the operation of your four shops of Dockside cannabis. What else is going on up there? And how else are you involved?

Yeah, so at… At this point, we’re now starting to see not just normalization of attitudes towards cannabis, but normalization of business practices and normalization of infrastructure within the state of Washington. And so, to that end, we’ve had to really build a lot of the institutions that provide the foundation for such things to happen.

One of those institutions is the cannabis Alliance, which I’m privileged to sit at this point, an adjunct board member of the organization we started off through Americans for Safe Access first doing patient advocacy that then morphed into an industry group called the Coalition for cannabis standards and ethics, and then, that organization merged, with different groups throughout the state.

CS Collier canes centers and ethics was founded in Seattle and one of the… One of the demerits of only being a Seattle-based organization, was that we weren’t really getting a lot of the voices from different parts of the States.

We put together an outreach initiative to contact other folks that had interest and had opinions and had experiences throughout the state, and we found that there were other organizing bodies, and we decided to meld those organizations into the Coalition for cannabis into the cannabis. So it’s a bigger part in… And through that organization, we represent a constituency of about 250 members throughout the state, and these are folks that are producers, processors, retailers folks in ancillary businesses such as HR consultants accountants bookkeepers soon and so forth. Any aspect that would feed into the cannabis supply chain, both directly and at an ancillary level so procurement of packaging, so on and so forth. And so that’s something that’s keeping me busy. I’ve also been privileged to be invited to sit on a couple of advisory boards both for the city of Seattle to the Washington State Senate and to provide just to provide input to our regulatory body which is the Washington State Liquor and Cannabis Board. And they need to hear from you. 

They certainly do they really do, they really do and I… So for as much black as they take on, I think people have to understand that this is a nascent industry and cultural shift of being able to normalize a good, in a good market that has already existed that has been reconciled in parallel markets before and so transitioning that and creating the infrastructure of the regulatory the regulatory underpinnings.

It’s a significant undertaking and so takes work to get it right is work to get it right. And so I think really patients gathering communication, it’s all fundamental to making the system work. So that’s the work that I’m doing on the policy side of things, on the regulatory side of things, on the business side of things, like I mentioned, we and my two partners operate four stores here in the Seattle area and now that that has normalized as well and as we’ve established our business rules and protocols and systems and so on, and so forth, this is allowed me to present a different things like continuing legal education seminars. And I was approached by somebody afterwards from the audience who said I need to write your brain, and so immediately.

Wow, no, thank you, and I said, “Well let me talk to my group and see what we can put together. And so now I’ve now have stepped into an executive consultant role, where I serve it as advisor to private entities to institutional entities, as well, as a tribal entity here in Washington State.

Yeah, and it’s not a privilege to be able to work with all of the… Just different groups. So that’s what’s keeping me busy and the one to… Yeah, no, it’s great to get involved in all of those things and make sure that the opinions and the information and the facts are available, so yeah, thanks for staying busy. I know it’s probably a lot to take on, but… Oh yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

And another thing I forgot to mention is that, I’m just talking about the work that I’ve been doing here in Washington state, a lot of the foundational work that I very happily did has transitioned into folks outside of the state of Washington reaching out to me for guidance, for information just for feedback and to learn about the experiences that we’ve had here in Washington, what we’ve implemented so I’ve been able to help folks talk about these topics in Arkansas and Missouri, in Tennessee and a broad in exchanges in Germany, in Israel, in France, in Italy, in Mexico and just essentially creating, creating this web of support to or what does a global shift in cannabis regulation, and statute.

Yeah, we’ve only got a couple minutes left in this segment and I did wanna talk a bit about global markets, but first quickly banking and taxes are two huge issues for the cannabis industry and you are subject to those pretty awful federal tax code section 280E of the tax code, meaning, you can’t deduct most normal business expenses. Can you quickly just talk about that and how it’s impacting you and the need for reform?

Yeah, okay, so, well your listeners must know the history of  280E. so I’m not gonna get into that, right?

It’s an interesting story as it’s a very interesting story. But effectively what this does is the businesses that operate within the cannabis space that are actually touching the plant, as the code specifically says, Cannot take standard business deductions. Right, ’cause it’s a “cisalpine exactly for trafficking of Schedule one or Schedule two narcotics. Okay, well they’re very, very interesting. You can read the code, you can read a very narrow scope interpretation or very broad scope interpretation of that code.

Consider the fact, consider the fact that the businesses that are state-licensed and regulated by jurisdictions are in concessionary relationships with the jurisdiction that oversees their business existence.

Okay, without giving too much away, about our thinking about this, there are approaches that businesses can take to minimize the impact of this very, what I believe is not a lot that is unjustly applied to state licensed businesses. This is not trafficking.

So clearly we need to update the law, we need to absolutely yeah, NCIA’s approach is to amend that section of the code to exempt state legal cannabis businesses. So, while getting that kind of amendment is a process in and of itself, of course, and we work through the various channels that we have with our GR team in DC. So yeah, obviously it needs to change, it’s out of date, it doesn’t make sense. We’re in a whole new paradigm now, so it’s just gotta change another thing Ethan, if I make the Congressional delegations, in Washington DC, from the different states need to know that those tax dollars that are what I believe are unjustly and perhaps illegally being pilford from these businesses are not staying in the state of those businesses, they’re in fact they’re being extracted by the federal government, and so the constituency of these representatives are being negatively impacted by an antiquated code that desperately needs to be updated, yeah. So this is something very important to note, and for some of your listeners that want to exchange if I may selfish selfishly say Please feel free, too. I don’t know if you’ll give my contact but feel free to send an email to info at doings dot com. 

Cool, great, yeah, let’s take our last commercial break here and we’ll be right back to chat more with Oscar. stay tuned.

We’re back on NCIA’s’s cannabis industry voice on cannabis radio, and we’re chatting with Oscar from do side cannabis about all things cannabis. We’ve covered some deeper issues related to Section 28 of the tax code and how that’s impacting the cannabis industry. Also banking, banking is a big deal in NCIA is extra excited about banking right now because we’ve had movement on the safe Banking Act the secure and fair enforcement Banking Act, which provides safe harbor for cannabis companies, however, it is only out of committee at this point, which is still a very big deal, but it still has its journey as a bill sitting on Capitol Hill making its way. 

So, Oscar, talking about the banking crisis what’s interesting is Washington State has actually made some progress on its own on this front for cannabis companies. Can you tell me more about what’s going on in the things for that? 

Absolutely, thanks Bethany.

So, credit unions have really stepped up to serve the industry and Washington State, cool and while not all capital market products are available yet. Through these institutions, the primary operating functions that allow for businesses to operate day-to-day are in place, and they are under strict compliance rules around using these services, and again, it’s up to the sole discretion of these private credit unions as to which business entities the bank, so there’s a rigorous vetting process that goes on to be able to gain access so we do have a limited amount of banking services, albeit without the use of credit cards yet, because that’s a completely separate set of protocols, right? Yeah, absolutely, well, that’s great to hear. And while we’re working on the bigger banking crisis nationally hopefully more credit unions in other states will step up and follow suit for the friendly credit unions we’re finding in Washington State. That’s great, a son and a… So yeah, let’s jump to another topic real quick. Obviously in the US we’re saying co-sponsors on our legislation that supports our industry on both sides of the isle Democrats and Republicans and we, the industry are getting out there and educating them. And putting our personal face on it. So, there’s anecdotes and research that we’re able to bring in and show these regulators and lawmakers to tell them what’s holding us back.

What has your experience been around some of that really important information, or maybe research that we still need absolutely, yeah. 

So we still need to fund basic research around the plant, we need to fund basic research to really investigate at the molecular level. What are the benefits, specifically to different indications for medical purposes, what are health externalities, that we should be considering? This all requires basic research. These are a lot of the questions that I get from really big picture thinkers from institutions. What are the risks that are involved, what are people thinking? And unfortunately, because of the stigma and the statutes in the US, a lot of this research has not happened here a lot of it is happening in Israel now that medical cannabis is legal in, Europe. You’re gonna start to see a lot more research happening there. And so really, the US is really, we’re cutting ourselves at the knees by not doing this. And in fact, there’s a vehicle here at the University of Washington in putting together a cannabinoid Research Center, which we deal with the pharmacology, psychopharmacology the plant biology, all aspects, and not just you do But also Washington State University to do the research on agronomy, the agricultural research as well and so a lot of efforts are underway, and the different jurisdictional legislature legislative bodies need to fund these efforts as does the federal government of America, truly… 

Yeah, so before we wrap up the show here, yeah I’d like to mention one of our policy council papers about how the US is falling behind in the Global cannabis market, which is actually the name of the Policy Council paper we published. It can be found in two spots on NCIA’s website, it’s in the industry reports section under the news and resources, and it’s also in the policy council area, which is under the About Us so I highly recommend checking out that report how the US is falling behind in the global cannabis market.

Okay, so before we head out, I wanna say thank you so much for being involved in “ncia you’ve been a member for many years, and I appreciate your involvement in the community, local and national, and I do hope to see you at lobby days this year in May, if you can make it, the game at one.

Yeah, May 21st through 23rd, for more information about that, go to the cannabis industry, or lobby days 2019 and you must be a member of NCIA and you must register in advance to participate. So friendly reminder to those listening.

So yeah, thank you again, Oscar it’s always a pleasure to connect with you and thank you again for being a member of NCIA.

Of course, yeah, I just wanna say NCIA was at the forefront of this effort, and it’s really provided the megaphone and the platform for our voices to ring in the ears of our elected officials. So thank you for that NCIA mutual gratitude.

 Alright, okay, thanks everyone for tuning in to this episode of NCIA’s Cannabis Industry Voice, until next time.